Assistant Professor of Psychology Ariana Orvell on Building an Emotional Toolbox
A hammer and nail to hang a picture frame. A wrench to fix a leaky sink. When you open up a toolbox, you know which item to select to solve your problem. Bryn Mawr College Assistant Professor of Psychology Ariana Orvell wants people to build their own toolbox— but instead of drill bits and screws, this toolbox is filled with strategies and tactics to manage emotions.
A recent publication coauthored by Orvell in the journal Emotion, “Managing emotions in everyday life: Why a toolbox of strategies matters,” explores how people flexibly draw on a toolbox of strategies to help them manage anxiety in daily life. The COVID-19 pandemic provided Orvell and her colleagues with a unique opportunity to investigate how individuals regulate their emotions through adversity in real time. Orvell and her team recruited 422 participants from the United States—one sample was recruited during the first peak of the COVID-19 pandemic and another nationally representative sample was recruited several months later. Participants rated their level of anxiety surrounding COVID-19 and indicated which of 18 emotion-regulation strategies—such as journaling, social interaction, and cognitive reframing—they used to manage it every day, for two weeks.
People used between three and four strategies per day, on average, to regulate their anxiety. Interacting with other people was used the most frequently, being endorsed 54 percent of the time. Other common strategies included thinking about the situation not lasting forever (38 percent), going outside (36 percent), and exercising (30 percent).
“Some of these strategies may have been endorsed more frequently due to the unique circumstances of COVID,” Orvell says. “However, some of them were also strategies that hadn't received as much attention in the literature at the time, so it was interesting to see them used at such high rates in people’s daily lives.”
Overall, there was a lot of variability in how people combined strategies over the two-week period, even though people tended to have a stable toolbox that they would draw from. What Orvell and her colleagues found is that using healthier combinations of strategies (like exercising or adopting a broader perspective) predicted lower anxiety the next day. And, when people used larger combinations of strategies that differed from what they typically used, they also reported lower anxiety the next day.
Overall, this shows how helpful it can be to develop a toolbox of strategies that you can turn to.
In line with this idea, Orvell’s research is motivated by her interest in identifying processes and tools that can help people regulate their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors to fulfill their goals.
She strives to identify tools that are easily available to people—or, as Orvell says, hidden in plain sight— such as speaking to yourself in the second or third person. Talking through a conflict in the third person allows someone to take a step back from their own thoughts and gain an outside perspective. As explained in Orvell’s publication, “Lost perspective? Try this linguistic trick to reset your view,” this strategy doesn’t cost anything or require any materials, but it underscores how language and subtle shifts in perspective can affect our emotional well-being.
Orvell conducts research with students on a range of topics. In one ongoing project, she and her students are exploring whether rituals promote self-control in children.
Her students are also exploring the psychological functions of using the word “you” to refer to people in general (e.g., “You never know if you don’t try), with a focus on interpersonal dynamics. For example, Hannah Gordon '25 and Orvell are investigating whether generic pronouns are used to convey certain ideas in children’s books. Norah Rivett ’25 is examining whether different types of pronouns may promote civic engagement, and Catie Chun ’25 is exploring whether hearing someone share their own experiences using generic you (e.g., “As a Chinese American, I’ve found that when you surround yourself with other Asians, you learn more about your culture…”) promotes feelings of social connection and strengthens people’s affiliation with their Asian American identity.
“A lot of my work is interdisciplinary,” Orvell says. “I work with kids, and I also integrate perspectives from clinical psychology. As a parent of two young children, I’m constantly trying to apply psychological science to help myself and my kids regulate our emotions, thoughts or behaviors.”
This spring, Orvell is teaching Social Psychology, Laboratory in Social Psychology, Unlocking the self-control toolbox, and Senior Thesis.
“My hope is that students walk away with practical tools they can apply in their own lives,” says Orvell. “However, I emphasize that no single strategy works for everyone or in every situation. Instead, I aim to give students a toolbox of strategies, encouraging them to think critically about the science behind each one. I want them to evaluate the strength of the evidence, consider whether a strategy is likely to work across different cultures or people with different backgrounds, and reflect on how it might fit their unique circumstances and goals.”