Running Head: BELIEFS ABOUT EMOTIONS AND EMOTION SCHEMAS 1 Disentangling beliefs about emotions from emotion schemas Jennifer C. Veilleux Kaitlyn D. Chamberlain Danielle E. Baker Elise A. Warner University of Arkansas Corresponding Author: Jennifer C. Veilleux, Ph.D. University of Arkansas 216 Memorial Hall Fayetteville, AR 72701 Phone: 479-575-5329 Fax: 479-575-3219 Email: [email protected] BELIEFS ABOUT EMOTIONS AND EMOTION SCHEMAS 2 Abstract The current study sought to empirically evaluate a new clinical tool, the Individual Beliefs about Emotion (IBAE) which assesses nine beliefs about emotion. The goal was to examine the overlap of the IBAE with the Leahy Emotional Schema Scale (LESS; Leahy, 2002) and indices of psychopathology. Participants (n = 513) completed the IBAE, the LESS, and measures of depression, anxiety, and borderline personality features. Results indicated that both emotion beliefs (IBAE) and schemas (LESS) were influenced by age and gender. Both measures significantly predicted variance in depression, anxiety and borderline symptoms, although the LESS was a stronger predictor. We conclude that the LESS total score is a particularly useful measure of maladaptive schematic attitudes toward emotion, with additional evidence that the IBAE can quickly assess a variety of emotion beliefs and also predicts psychopathology outcomes. Keywords: Emotion beliefs, Emotion Schemas, Emotion Attitudes, Psychopathology BELIEFS ABOUT EMOTIONS AND EMOTION SCHEMAS 3 The beliefs people hold about emotions have implications for their emotional well-being. In clinical settings, beliefs about emotion are often assessed as emotional schemas (Leahy, 2002), which may be problematic because although emotional schemas include emotion beliefs, schemas are broader. Emotional schemas are beliefs and attitudes people hold about emotions as well as perceptions of self-efficacy in controlling and managing emotions (Leahy, 2015; Leahy, Tirch, & Napolitano, 2011). These schemas are perhaps most salient in the context of Emotional Schema Therapy (EST; Leahy, 2002, 2015; Leahy et al., 2011), a treatment approach which helps train people to identify and shift their emotional schemas in the service of more effective emotional functioning. Whether adopting EST or a more traditional cognitive-behavioral approach, understanding a client’s beliefs about emotions could be extremely helpful in guiding case formulation and subsequent treatment planning, particularly with knowledge about how specific beliefs about emotions are related to different symptom presentations. Individual Beliefs About Emotion The current study is primarily focused on an initial empirical investigation of a new clinical tool to assess emotion beliefs, the Individual Beliefs About Emotion (IBAE). The IBAE assesses nine beliefs about emotion. (1) Cause, the belief that emotions come out of the blue (versus have clear causes), (2) Judgment, the belief that negative emotions are destructive, (3) Complexity, the belief that a person should feel only one emotion at a time, (4) Expression, the belief that emotions should be kept inside and not expressed, (5) Preference, the belief that logic is preferable to emotion, (6) Controllability, the belief that it’s difficult (perhaps impossible) to act differently than emotions, (7) Malleability, the belief that emotions are hard to change, (8) Uniqueness, the belief that other people’s emotions are different, and (9) Longevity, the belief that negative feelings seem to last forever. In the IBAE, each belief is assessed with a single BELIEFS ABOUT EMOTIONS AND EMOTION SCHEMAS 4 item, with bipolar response anchors. For example, one pole of the Expression item is the belief endorsing the necessity of emotional expression (“Emotions must be ‘let out’ and expressed to the world”) whereas the other pole reflects the belief that expression should be limited (“Emotions should be kept inside the self; no one wants to deal with other people’s emotions”). See Table 1 for all of the questions and anchors. The IBAE was developed as a clinical tool, after noting that the workbooks and treatment guides which involve informal identification of “myths” about emotions (Linehan, 2015; Spradlin, 2003) have not been subject to clear empirical support. The IBAE was intended to expand upon social psychological research highlighting the importance of beliefs about malleability (i.e., the belief that emotions are changeable or controllable; Ford & Gross, 2018; Tamir, John, Srivastava, & Gross, 2007) in predicting emotion regulation and emotional outcomes (De Castella et al., 2013; De Castella, Platow, Tamir, & Gross, 2017; Kneeland, Dovidio, Joormann, & Clark, 2016; Kneeland, Nolen-Hoeksema, Dovidio, & Gruber, 2016). Specifically, the IBAE corresponds with efforts to expand assessment of emotion beliefs beyond beliefs about malleability (Veilleux, Salomaa, Shaver, Zielinski, & Pollert, 2015) and quantitatively addresses clinical material on emotion myths. Stated differently, the IBAE was developed to be a brief clinical tool, similar to the emotion “myth” worksheets, and building upon prior assessments of emotion beliefs (Tamir et al., 2007; Veilleux et al., 2015). We have used the IBAE clinically to help clients identify and work with their emotion beliefs, and we wanted to take the next step by obtaining empirical data to verify that the beliefs assessed by the IBAE are indeed associated with symptoms of psychopathology. Measuring Emotion Schemas BELIEFS ABOUT EMOTIONS AND EMOTION SCHEMAS 5 Those familiar with EST might wonder why a new assessment of emotion beliefs is needed, due to the existence of the Leahy Emotional Schema Scale (LESS; Leahy, 2002). The LESS is a 50-item scale assessing 14 schema dimensions, which was recently revised into a shorter 28-item version (LESS-II; Leahy, 2016). The 14 schemas assessed on the LESS/LESS-II cover a wide variety of beliefs about emotions, including the belief that emotions are clear and comprehensible, the belief that emotions should be simple, the belief that emotions make people lose control, the preference for logic over emotion, the belief that emotions linger or persist, the belief that emotions are common universal experiences, the belief that emotions should be expressed, and the belief that emotions are destructive and should be avoided. When taken together, the entire LESS measure is thought to assess negative attitudes toward emotion (Batmaz, Ulusoy Kaymak, Kocbiyik, & Turkcapar, 2014; Leahy, Tirch, & Melwani, 2012; Silberstein, Tirch, Leahy, & McGinn, 2012; Tirch, Leahy, Silberstein, & Melwani, 2012). Total scores on the LESS have been associated with increased alexithymia (Edwards, Micek, Mottarella, & Wupperman, 2017), a history of childhood abuse (Edwards et al., 2017; Rezaei, Ghazanfari, & rezaee, 2016)m depressive symptoms (Leahy, 2002; Leahy et al., 2012), bipolar symptoms (Batmaz et al., 2014), anxiety symptoms (Tirch et al., 2012), a tendency toward risk aversion (Leahy et al., 2012), low mindfulness (Silberstein et al., 2012) and low psychological flexibility (Leahy et al., 2012; Silberstein et al., 2012). Considering that this measure is known and clearly predicts a wide variety of related phenomena, why not simply use the LESS or LESS-II to assess emotion beliefs? Our view is that the LESS and LESS-II remain useful measures of emotional schemas. However, there are two areas of concern about the LESS if the intention is to understand the role of emotion beliefs in predicting psychopathology and emotion dysregulation. The first is whether BELIEFS ABOUT EMOTIONS AND EMOTION SCHEMAS 6 there are meaningful distinctions between emotion beliefs and emotion schemas that are important to disentangle. The second is whether the LESS dimensions are truly distinct and provide unique independent predictors, or if the LESS is better conceptualized as an overall measure assessing negative judgments and attitudes about emotion as well as emotion regulation tendencies. We address each of these concerns in turn. Separating Beliefs from Schemas It should be noted that the schemas assessed by the LESS (and the LESS-II) assess dimensions that actually go beyond beliefs about emotion (Leahy, 2002). Indeed, descriptions of the LESS and of emotional schemas cover beliefs about emotions and related attributes regarding responses to emotions. For example, the LESS assesses validation, or the degree to which a person feels as though other people understand their emotions, which is certainly a belief related to emotional experiences. People who believe that others understand and accept their emotional responses have fewer psychological symptoms and better emotion regulation strategies (Zielinski & Veilleux, 2018), but perceptions that there are validating individuals in the person’s life is not truly a belief about the self. In addition, the tendency to connect emotions to higher values, the tendency to experience numbness or lack of emotion, and the tendency to engage in rumination are likewise tendencies that relate to emotional experience which are not truly beliefs about the construct of emotion or how emotions operate for a given person (De Castella et al., 2013). Specific Schema Dimensions Considering the breadth of schema dimensions assessed by the LESS, one question is: which of the specific schema dimensions are particularly salient in predicting symptoms of psychopathology and/or problematic emotion regulation strategies? Using zero-order BELIEFS ABOUT EMOTIONS AND EMOTION SCHEMAS 7 correlations, each of the