Negative views of out-groups and emotion regulation strategies: Evidence for an association with the tendency to suppress emotion expression, but not with cognitive reappraisal or emotion dysregulation.

Emotions influence attitudes and appraisals toward out-groups, including prejudice. We hypothesized that individuals who

successfully regulate emotions will express more positive attitudes toward out-groups. We conducted an online study of associations

between emotion regulation and attitudes toward out-groups in a Finnish population-based sample (N = 320). As

hypothesized, expressive suppression was associated with decreased acceptance toward out-groups, but contrary to our hypothesis,

cognitive reappraisal was not associated with increased acceptance. In exploratory analyses, we found that individuals with

more cognitive reappraisal (vs. expressive suppression) had a higher acceptance of out-groups, and that emotion regulation may

not influence attitudes toward all out-groups equally. In conclusion, we present novel results indicating that habitual emotion

regulation strategies are differently associated with attitudes toward a broad array of out-groups, and that the sociocultural aspects

of emotion regulation toward out-group attitudes may play a role.