At this moment, someone is waking up, again, with depression. Today, I’ll try harder to pull myself out of this funk, they think. They look in the mirror and force a smile, having learned that activating facial muscles can improve mood. They repeat affirmations aloud — I am loved. I am safe — but stop when they realize their brain is fixating on the reality that they haven’t heard back about a job opportunity. They feel anxiety building over having to put themselves through the interview process yet again. But then they recall a therapist’s advice: distract yourself. They turn on a lighthearted podcast, but struggle to concentrate. They want to feel better, but they also want to curl up and cry.
This may be a fictionalized scenario but, to many suffering from depression, it still rings true. It’s the inner dialogue — the competing motivations and continual effort to regulate emotions while in the pit of depression — that is a key focus for social psychologist Danfei Hu, a former Azrieli International Postdoctoral Fellow at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and currently an assistant professor at the University of York in the U.K. Hu’s research challenges the conventional belief that people with depression simply need to try harder to feel better. In time, the research could change the way psychologists treat depression.
Born and raised in Wuhan, China, Hu immigrated to the U.S. for her graduate studies before moving to Israel. She became interested in the science of emotion regulation while pursuing her PhD in social psychology at Pennsylvania State University. Her scientific journey began when she worked as a research student on a project that sought to motivate high school students to study science, technology, engineering and math. The project examined how students’ beliefs about struggle shaped their motivation: students who viewed difficulties as a sign of lacking innate talent tended to avoid challenges, while those who attributed difficulties to insufficient effort were more likely to persist.
As Hu talked to high school students, she realized that how people feel could critically shape motivation. “Students would often say they hate math because the subject was difficult and made them anxious,” she says. “This experience sparked my interest in the intersection of motivation and emotion.”
In other areas where self-regulation plays a role, such as weight loss and academic achievement, research has emphasized the importance of motivation. Improving academic performance, for example, often depends on students being motivated to learn the subject or care about their achievement in the first place. But for emotion regulation, Hu says, most research has focused on strategies, not motivation. The science recommended, for instance, that if you feel sad, distract yourself or try to use another perspective to analyze the situation.
Hu’s training in the science of motivation raised questions about this approach. “If people aren’t motivated to do something in the first place, just telling them what to do is not enough,” she says. Hu wanted to back up the truck. Before determining how to help those who struggle to deal with their sadness or anxiety, she wanted to know: Do people who feel down want to feel better? Are they trying to make themselves feel better? And, if so, why isn’t that working? She chose the Hebrew University of Jerusalem so she could work with Maya Tamir, a world-renowned scientist in emotion regulation and motivation, and was supported with an Azrieli International Postdoctoral Fellowship. “I was really excited to work with someone whose research I had admired and followed for years,” Hu says, “and the Azrieli Fellowship made that dream come true.” She says the Fellowship also gave her the sense of community with other visiting scholars funded by the program — “a support network to navigate this experience together.”
