Breaking the Link Between Negative Emotion and Unhealthy Eating: the Role of Emotion Regulation.

Unlabelled: Stressful experiences frequently lead to increased consumption of unhealthy foods, high in sugar and fat yet low in nutrients. Can emotion regulation help break this link? In a laboratory experiment ( = 200), participants were encouraged to ruminate on a current, distressing personal problem, followed by instruction to use a specific emotion regulation strategy for managing feelings around that problem (challenge appraisal, relaxation/distraction, imagined social support, no-instruction control). Participants then spent 15 min on an anagram task in which 80% of items were unsolvable-a frustrating situation offering a second, implicit opportunity to use the regulation strategy.

Funny Date, Creative Mate? Unpacking the Effect of Humor on Romantic Attraction.

Extensive research shows that people are attracted to funny dating partners, with several competing, sometimes conflicting, explanations for why humor is strongly desired in a mate. The present research asks whether humor is interpreted as a reliable, hard-to-fake indicator of some other, valuable trait. Across six experiments, we manipulated humor in a hypothetical date, online dating profile, or video profile and asked which of several traits statistically linked to humor are reliably inferred about funny partners.