Case-control study, 2016
Do women with PMS have more difficulty controlling their emotions?
Women with PMS tend to suppress emotions rather than rethink situations, and PMS severity is linked to more suppression and less reappraisal. When suppressing emotions, women with PMS show stronger physical stress responses than women without PMS.
What they did
In Study 1, 230 women reported their usual emotion regulation strategies and PMS severity. In Study 2, 42 women with PMS and 42 without watched sad films. Some were instructed to rethink their emotions; others watched freely. Skin stress response and emotion regulation were measured.
What they found
Study 1 showed higher PMS severity was linked to more emotion suppression and less reappraisal. Study 2 found no clear difference between groups in naturally using emotion regulation. However, when women with PMS suppressed emotions, their skin stress response increased, unlike in women without PMS.
What it means for you
Women with PMS may control emotions differently, tending to hold feelings in rather than rethink situations. This suppression approach appears linked to higher physical stress responses. The main limit is that Study 2 used sad films rather than real PMS situations, so the findings may not reflect everyday PMS.
230
women in Study 1
42
women with PMS in Study 2
42
women without PMS in Study 2
About the study
- Original title
- Emotion Dysregulation of Women with Premenstrual Syndrome
- Authors
- Wu M, Liang Y, Wang Q et al.
- Journal
- Scientific reports
- Year
- 2016
- Study design
- Case-control study
- Participants
- 230
- What was tested
- Instructing some participants to rethink emotions during sad films; others watched without instruction.
- Open access
- Yes
- Read the paper
- doi.org/10.1038/srep38501
Original abstract
The aim of the current study was to test whether women with premenstrual syndrome (PMS) had difficulties in emotion regulation. In Study 1, we investigated the relationship between the habitual use of emotion-regulation strategies and the severity of PMS (n = 230). The results showed that the severity of PMS was negatively associated with the habitual use of reappraisal, but positively associated with the habitual use of suppression. In Study 2, we first investigated the difference in the spontaneous use of suppression versus reappraisal between women with (n = 42) and without PMS (n = 42) when watching sad film clips. Then we instructed some participants (PMS group = 20, healthy group = 21) to use reappraisal to regulate their emotions induced by a second sad film clip, and the other participants were asked to watch the second film clip freely (PMS group = 22, healthy group = 21). The results showed that there was no significant difference between participants with and without PMS in the self-reported spontaneous use of emotion-regulation strategies. For participants with PMS, increases in spontaneous suppression use were associated with increases in skin conductance level (SCL), while this association was not found among participants without PMS.
Reproduced under CC-BY.
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