Dr. Catherine Ortner’s research interests are in the area of emotion regulation. She has been funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and currently holds a grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. Since starting at TRU in 2008, she has been building a research program on emotion regulation— in particular its causes and consequences. Whether we are aware of it or not, we all regulate our emotions. The ways in which we manage our emotional responses to situations is fundamental to human performance, health, relationships, and well-being, and also has broader impacts on societal change. Her ultimate goal is to use what we (as a research community) have learnt about emotion regulation to improve people’s daily lives.
Her current research focuses on translating insights from emotion regulation science into practical interventions that help individuals improve their emotional well-being and live healthier, more productive lives. She is interested in the variables that influence people’s choices of emotion regulation strategies, and how we can facilitate adaptive emotion regulation choices, both in the laboratory and in everyday life. At the same time, she is exploring how emotion regulation can be harnessed to address major societal challenges, such as climate change, by influencing behaviours that promote collective action. Dr. Ortner uses questionnaires, interventions, mouse-tracking, eye-tracking, daily diaries, and mobile applications in her research.
Current areas of interest:
- Translating Emotion Regulation Research into Interventions
- Dr. Ortner’s lab is translating what we know about emotion regulation into practical tools that individuals can use to improve their emotional well-being and psychological functioning. In 2023, her lab began developing a mini-intervention to teach evidence-based strategies for emotion regulation in different contexts.
- Cognitive Consequences of Emotion Regulation
- Dr. Ortner is investigating how different emotion regulation strategies may affect memory for facial expressions and emotional events. She is examining two theories, depth of processing and the memory control framework, to better understand the relationship between emotion regulation and memory.
- Emotion Regulation and Societal Challenges (particularly Climate Change)
- With her students, Dr. Ortner is exploring how emotion regulation can contribute to solving major societal issues, such as climate change. While some forms of emotion regulation can improve well-being, they may also reduce the likelihood of engaging in climate action. Her lab is investigating how emotions like anger and fear, and the regulation of those emotions, influence climate change mitigation behaviors.
- Expanding Emotion Regulation Research to Diverse Samples
- The lab has partnered with Nadia Brown of Rebuilding Thoughts (a wellness service) to study the emotional toll of content moderation, a high-stress job that involves managing emotionally charged online content. Another study is examining emotion regulation in queer individuals anticipating queerphobic violence.