Rosenzweig picture-frustration test modification for a study of emotion regulation strategies among the patients with stress-induced hypertension

Abstract

Introduction

Emotion regulation (ER) efficiency dwells among the most pressing issues of contemporary psychology and psychiatry. Further development of the methods of reliable assessments for ER makes it the task of current importance.

Objective

To modify Rosenzweig Picture-Frustration Test for the study of ER in health and in disease.

Methods

In the initial stage of testing participants had to look through a succession of Rosenzweig's pictures, and select potentially traumatizing situations.

In the second stage they answered the following questions:

• – what would you say in this particular situation?

• – what would you have in mind, saying this?

• – could you think of an answer that would taper down the traumatizing character of the situation in your own perception? (Zinchenko, Pervichko, 2014).

A total of 85 patients with stress-induced hypertension (mean age was 45.9 ± 2.8) and 82 healthy subjects (mean age was 44.9 ± 3.1) took part in the study.

Results

We came to distinguish among four classes of ER strategies: internal, cognitively non-mediated; internal, cognitively transforming; external, cognitively non-mediated; and external, cognitively transforming (Pervichko, 2015). Hypertensive patients significantly more frequently than healthy subjects reveal wider set of emotionally grave events (19.8% vs 11.2%, P < 0.001), they are more prone to rumination, disasterization (19.0% vs 11.1%, P < 0.001) and suppression in display of their emotions (31.9% vs 20.2%, P < 0.001). The patients will seldom employ the strategy of interactive subject–subject transformations; their capability to actualize new meanings in traumatic situations is diminished.

Conclusions

Application of the described modification of Rosenzweig Picture-Frustration Test allows to distinguish and classify various ER strategies, and to demonstrate peculiarities in ER related behaviour of hypertensive patients as opposed to healthy subjects.

Disclosure of interest

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.