Title Promoter Affiliations Abstract "Understanding emotional attention from an emotion regulation goal perspective." "Jan De Houwer" "Department of Experimental clinical and health psychology" "We examine the idea that emotion regulation goals cause and modulate attentional biases to emotional information. Based on this idea, we predict that what stimuli will be attended (e.g., positive or negative) and how attention might be deployed (i.e., towards or away) will depend on the emotion regulation goal at stake." "Emotion Regulation in the Prevention and Treatment of Obesity in Young Adolescents" "Caroline Braet" "Department of Developmental, Personality and Social Psychology" "This multidisciplinary project aims to prove that studying emotion regulation for restoring the psychological and physiological homeostasis is a promising progress for a profound understanding of the obesity problem. We aim to exceed current expertise on obesity with various complementary study designs: longitudinal, case-control and a randomized-clinical-trial using emotion regulation training. Evidence will come from psychological and physiological outcome measures." "Emotion Regulation in the Prevention and Treatment of Obesity in Young Adolescents" "Stefaan De Henauw" "Department of Public Health and Primary Care, Department of Public health" "This multidisciplinary project aims to prove that studying emotion regulation for restoring the psychological and physiological homeostasis is a promising progress for a profound understanding of the obesity problem. We aim to exceed current expertise on obesity with various complementary study designs: longitudinal, case-control and a randomized-clinical-trial using emotion regulation training. Evidence will come from psychological and physiological outcome measures." "Interpersonal emotion regulation in couples: Cultural differences and similarities" "Batja Gomes de Mesquita" "Social and Cultural Psychology" "There are cultural differences in emotions, but across cultures, people experience emotions that are helpful to the relationship goals valued by their culture. This proposal sheds light on the interpersonal processes that align people’s emotions with these culture-specific relationship goals. In three studies (lab, daily diary), we examine the role of interpersonal emotion regulation (IER) in producing cultural differences in the emotions of romantic partners during conflict interactions. We test the idea that cultural differences in relationship goals during the interaction motivate differences in IER, and produce differences in the ensuing dyadic emotions. We also expect that dyadic emotions that are helpful to the cultural relationship goals are associated with the partners’ wellbeing and relationship satisfaction through goal satisfaction." "Adolescents’ coping with parental pressure: The role of parenting history and emotion regulation" "Maarten Vansteenkiste" "Department of Developmental, Personality and Social Psychology" "In the present project, we aim to investigate whether youngsters may cope differently with pressuring parenting strategies. Specifically, we will test whether these coping reactions are determined by the general parenting history and the adolescents’ emotion regulation style. Moreover, we will investigate whether we can affect youngsters’ emotion regulation style through an intervention." "Getting through the storm and stress of adolescence: A closer look at adaptive emotion regulation in at-risk youth" "Caroline Braet" "Department of Developmental, Personality and Social Psychology" "Adolescence is a turbulent period. One skill for helping youth in dealing with negative affect is adaptive emotion regulation (ER). First, we study the efficacy of ER strategies (ERS) in dealing with everyday stress. Second, we study the attentional and physiological changes underlying the effects of ERS using a computerized ER training for three ERS: distraction, cognitive reappraisal, and self-compassion." "The effects of an innovative Cognitive Control and Emotion Regulation Skills Training (CEST) on adolescent inpatients with depression: a clustered randomised controlled trial" "Caroline Braet" "Department of Developmental, Personality and Social Psychology" "Although current psychotherapies for depression have been shown to be effective in reducing depressive symptoms, a significant proportion of adolescent patients (30-40%) relapse after initial recovery. This highlights the absolute need for new intervention programs that target basic mechanisms underlying the development of depressive episodes. The studies included my PhD and other recent evidence reliably demonstrate that both cognitive control (CC) deficits and emotion regulation (ER) difficulties play a crucial role in the etiology and maintenance of adolescent depression. To date however, despite growing evidence in adults, studies investigating the effects of intervention programs focusing on CC, ER, or the combination of both in depressed adolescents are lacking. Hence, the major aim of my postdoc project is to evaluate whether training CC and ER skills enhances the effectiveness of conventional treatments for inpatient depressed adolescents. Adult research already showed positive effects of training programs focusing on either CC or ER, yet only one study demonstrated the positive effects an integrated cognitive-emotional program. Moreover, studies in depressed adolescents are non-existent which makes my proposal innovative and relevant." "Interpersonal Emotion Regulation in Couples Facing Perinatal Depression" "Lesley Verhofstadt" "Department of Head and Skin, Department of Experimental clinical and health psychology" "The proposal aims to examine (a) interpersonal emotion regulation strategies (IERS) in couples facing perinatal depression), (b) which of these IERS are (mal)adaptive, and (3) the interplay between IERS and other psychosocial risk factors. We will therefore use a combination of Multi-Family-Member Interviews, a questionnaire study, and a prospective ESM study, within samples of couples facing perinatal depression." "Understanding Obesity in Young Adolescents : the Role of Emotion Regulation" "Caroline Braet" "Department of Public Health and Primary Care, Department of Public health, Department of Developmental, Personality and Social Psychology" "This multidisciplinary project aims to prove that studying emotion regulation for restoring the psychological and physiological homeostasis is a promising progress for a profound understanding of the obesity problem. We aim to exceed current expertise on obesity with various complementary study designs: casecontrol, lab-study and a randomized-clinical-trial. Evidence will come from psychological and physiological outcome measures." "Emotion regulation in couples: a relational needs approach" "Lesley Verhofstadt" "Department of Experimental clinical and health psychology" "In the current project we will examine the validity of the assumptions underlying emotion-focused approaches to couples therapy. We will use a variety of methods -global self-reports, diaries, scenarios, behavioral observation in the lab- to gain a better insight into partners' specific needs and primary/secondary emotions that power relationship conflict and lead to distress. These insights will be particularly useful for therapists trying to help couples with resolving their conflict and distress."