Emotion Regulation in Trait Schizotypy

Emotion Regulation in Individuals With High and Low Trait Schizotypy. A Randomized Controlled Trial Comparing Suppression and Reappraisal

Our aim is to compare state anger and state emotion regulation strategies in healthy individuals with high trait schizotypy and to look at differences of induced anger, negative emotions, decrease of positive emotions and aggressive behaviour after anger induction. Our further aim is to compare conditions where an instruction to suppress or reappraise emotions is given with a control condition with no instruction.

Study Overview

• Status: Completed
• Conditions: Trait Schizotypy
• Intervention / Treatment: Behavioral: instruction to suppress; Behavioral: instruction to reappraise; Behavioral: control

• Study Type: Interventional
• Enrollment (Actual): 131
• Phase: Not Applicable

Participation Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

• Ages Eligible for Study: 16 years to 56 years (Adult)
• Accepts Healthy Volunteers: No
• Genders Eligible for Study: All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

• age between 18 and 58 years,
• good command of German language

Exclusion Criteria:

• present or past psychiatric or neurological illness,
• ongoing treatment with psychiatric drugs,
• constant consume of heroin or hallucinogenic drugs,
• alcohol dependence,
• cannabis consume two weeks before testing.

Study Plan

How is the study designed?

Design Details

• Primary Purpose: Treatment
• Allocation: Randomized
• Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
• Masking: None (Open Label)

Number of Arms

2

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm	Intervention / Treatment
Other: Low schizotypy; Schizotypy score < 14 measured by the German Version of Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire (Klein, Andresen, & Jahn, 1997)	Behavioral: instruction to suppress; "It might happen that in some situations in which you try to do something and you fail or things don't come up as you want, you could become angry, mad or irritated and feel some level of distress and discomfort. Next, try not to think of the situation that makes you angry, mad or irritated. Please try as much as you cannot to think about the situation, don't think about how you feel or what had happened, and try to suppress your emotions and not to feel them. It's very important to try as much as you cannot to think about the situation that makes you angry, mad or irritated." (Szasz, Szentagothai, & Hoffmann, 2011); Behavioral: instruction to reappraise; "It might happen that in some situations in which you try to do something and you fail or things don't come up as you want, you could become angry, mad or irritated and feel some level of distress and discomfort. Next, please try to tell yourself that or would be preferable that the others are nice and/or fair to you, but if they are not, it does not mean that you or they are worthless human beings. It would be preferable that the others be nice and/or fair to you but if they are not, remember that it is only (very) bad), not catastrophic (the worst thing that could happen to you). It would be preferable that others are nice and/or fair to you, but if they are not, you can tolerate it, and go on enjoying life, even if it's more difficult at the beginning." (Szasz et al., 2011); Behavioral: control; No instruction
Other: High schizotypy; Schizotypy score ≥ 14 measured by the German Version of Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire (Klein, Andresen, & Jahn, 1997)	Behavioral: instruction to suppress; "It might happen that in some situations in which you try to do something and you fail or things don't come up as you want, you could become angry, mad or irritated and feel some level of distress and discomfort. Next, try not to think of the situation that makes you angry, mad or irritated. Please try as much as you cannot to think about the situation, don't think about how you feel or what had happened, and try to suppress your emotions and not to feel them. It's very important to try as much as you cannot to think about the situation that makes you angry, mad or irritated." (Szasz, Szentagothai, & Hoffmann, 2011); Behavioral: instruction to reappraise; "It might happen that in some situations in which you try to do something and you fail or things don't come up as you want, you could become angry, mad or irritated and feel some level of distress and discomfort. Next, please try to tell yourself that or would be preferable that the others are nice and/or fair to you, but if they are not, it does not mean that you or they are worthless human beings. It would be preferable that the others be nice and/or fair to you but if they are not, remember that it is only (very) bad), not catastrophic (the worst thing that could happen to you). It would be preferable that others are nice and/or fair to you, but if they are not, you can tolerate it, and go on enjoying life, even if it's more difficult at the beginning." (Szasz et al., 2011); Behavioral: control; No instruction

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure	Measure Description	Time Frame
state anger	measured by the German version of State-Trait Anger Expression Inventory (Schwenkmetzger, Hodapp, & Spielberger, 1992)	3 minutes
state negative emotions	measured by the German Version of Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (Krohne, Egloff, Kohlmann, & Tausch, 1996)	3 minutes
state positive emotions	measured by the German Version of Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (Krohne, Egloff, Kohlmann, & Tausch, 1996)	3 minutes
aggressive behavior	measured by the amount of chili measured by the Hot Sauce Paradigm (Lieberman, Solomon, Greenberg, & McGregor, 1999)	3 minutes

Collaborators and Investigators

• Sponsor: Danube University Krems
• Collaborators: University of Vienna

Publications and helpful links

General Publications

• Klein, C., Andresen, B., & Jahn, T. (1997). Erfassung der schizotypen Persönlichkeit nach DSM-III-R: Psychometrische Eigenschaften einer autorisierten deutschsprachigen Übersetzung des
• Krohne, H. W., Egloff, B., Kohlmann, C. W., & Tausch, A. (1996). Untersuchung mit einer deutschen Form der Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS). Diagnostica, 42, 139-156.
• Lieberman, J. D., Solomon, S., Greenberg, J. & McGregor, H. A. (1999). A hot new way to measure aggression: hot sauce allocation, Aggressive Behavior, 25, 331-348
• Schwenkmetzger, P., Hodapp, V., & Spielberger, C. D. (1992). Das State-Trait-Ärgerausdrucks-Inventar (STAXI). Bern: Huber.
• Szasz PL, Szentagotai A, Hofmann SG. The effect of emotion regulation strategies on anger. Behav Res Ther. 2011 Feb;49(2):114-9. doi: 10.1016/j.brat.2010.11.011. Epub 2010 Dec 9.

Study record dates

Study Major Dates

• Study Start (Actual): March 1, 2016
• Primary Completion (Actual): May 31, 2017
• Study Completion (Actual): September 30, 2017

Study Registration Dates

• First Submitted: October 1, 2018
• First Submitted That Met QC Criteria: October 1, 2018
• First Posted (Actual): October 3, 2018

Study Record Updates

• Last Update Posted (Actual): October 9, 2018
• Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria: October 5, 2018
• Last Verified: October 1, 2018

More Information

Terms related to this study

• Other Study ID Numbers: DanubeUK

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

• Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?: Undecided
• IPD Plan Description: Interested researchers can request the data from the primary investigator (krisztina.kocsis-bogar@donau-uni.ac.at). Please give a short description of the study including an explanation about how you are going to use the data.

Drug and device information, study documents

• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product: No
• Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product: No