Examining Differences in Social Reappraisal Efficacy for Spanish-English Bilinguals

Abstract

Bilingualism, the usage of two languages in everyday life, is an increasingly common linguistic experience for people in the United States. Bilinguals receive input from both their first language (L1) and second language (L2) as they learn about emotions and emotion regulation. Previous research has shown that stimuli presented in the first language can provoke greater emotional reactivity compared to stimuli in the second language, but less research has examined how bilinguals’ language choices affect the regulation of emotions, especially in an interpersonal context. The present study seeks to investigate whether the efficacy of social reappraisal, an emotion regulation strategy where one person deliberately tries to regulate another’s emotions, is different when verbalized in a bilingual’s L1 versus L2. Spanish-English bilingual participants (target N = 250, collected N = 87) are presented with negative images before hearing audio recordings of descriptions or reappraisals in either L1 or L2. Preliminary results indicate that reappraisals lowered participants’ negative affect in both languages, but there was no significant difference in reappraisal efficacy between Spanish and English. The present work extends previous bilingual emotion research to suggest that balanced Spanish-English bilinguals reporting early acquisition and/or good proficiency in both languages may equally benefit from social reappraisal in both of their languages.