The self-regulation of appetitive impulses has been studied mostly in pre-school children, looking at their ability to forgo an immediate reward that is less attractive in return for a delayed reward that is more attractive to them (Ayduk et al., 2002). It has been shown that the children psychologically distance themselves from the ôhotö quality of the reward (taste of cookies,) by focusing on ôcoolö cognitive cues (shape of cookies) or by distracting thoughts. These authors hypothesized that thinking of rejection in terms of hot emotional responses would cause more hostility that thinking of it in terms of cool distracting and distancing terms. Their hypothesis was tested on 273 Columbia University graduate students Participants were primed with rejection thoughts by recalling a rejection episode from their past, and were asked to focus on the physiological and emotional aspects of the experience or the characteristics of the physical setting. Control subjects did not receive any instructions. ParticipantsÆ reaction times to hostile words were then measure to assess hostility, they completed an angry word questionnaire, and wrote an essay describing what they felt and imagined during the experience. Results showed that the hot focus lead to heightened anger, and the use of cool techniques such as distraction and distancing attenuated hostility.
Lengua et al (1999) looked at the theoretical model of direct and indirect effects of temperament on threat appraisals, coping and psychological symptoms in 9 to 12 year-olds of divorced parents. They hypothesized that negative emotionality could be used to predict threat appraisals, avoidant coping, higher levels of adjustment problems, and less active coping, and that positive emotionality could be used to predict greater self coping, less avoidant coping, and less adjustment problems. They also hypothesized that attention focusing would predict more active coping, more avo...