Work done by a DU graduate student on cognitive reappraisal and how women deal with stressful situations was featured on the Huffington Post’s website last week.
Allison Troy is working on a doctorate in social psychology and will graduate this June.
“The research that was reported on was a project that I completed for my Master’s Thesis,” she said. “In that project, I examined the relationship between cognitive reappraisal ability and depression in the context of high stress.”
The project, called “Seeing the Silver Lining: Cognitive Reappraisal Ability Moderates the Relationship Between Stress and Depressive Symptoms,” was done in collaboration with Frank Wilhelm from the University of Basel in Switzerland. According to Troy, Wilhelm is an expert in emotion, psycho-physiology and depression and was helpful throughout their time of research.
Cognitive Reappraisal is defined as re-framing an event in order to change one’s emotional response, and for this case it was turning the event into something positive in order to “see the silver lining.”
Troy’s research took six months and studied 78 women in the Denver metro area who had recently undergone a stressful situation. All the research was conducted in Frontier Hall on campus.
The 78 women were shown a series of sad film clips and half of them were asked to use the cognitive reappraisal method.
According to Troy, researchers gave them four pieces of advice: try to imagine advice you would give yourself to make you feel better; think about the positive effect this event could have on your life; think about the good things you might learn from this experience; and keep in mind that even though a situation may be painful in the moment, it could make your life better in the long run, or have unexpected good outcomes.
The women that used the method experienced decreased feelings of stress and negativity. The cognitive reappraisal method can be used in larger stressful situations as well, according to Troy.
Troy is currently working on more research for her dissertation. She is studying men and women and their relationship between cognitive reappraisal and psychological health in high stress situations.
“I came to the Ph.D. program here at DU so that I could study topics that I am extremely passionate about: emotion regulation and resilience,” she said. “I have loved doing research in the Psychology Department because my advisor, Iris Mauss, and all of the other faculty and graduate students in the department are extremely collaborative and supportive of each other’s work. I have also had the opportunity to work with several exceptional undergraduate research assistants, which has made my experiences even more rewarding.
