Emotion regulation choice: a broad examination of external factors

Abstract

Emotion regulation choices are known to be profoundly consequential across affective, cognitive, and social domains. Prior studies have identified two important external factors of emotion regulation choice: stimulus intensity and reappraisal affordances. However, whether there are other external factors of emotion regulation choice and how these factors contribute to emotion regulation choice when considered simultaneously is not yet clear. The current studies addressed these gaps by examining the relations between emotion regulation choice (distraction vs. reappraisal) and self-reported stimulus intensity, reappraisal affordances, and several other factors including discrete emotions and distraction affordances. Across three studies using different databases of standardised images to enhance generalizability, our results showed that in the context of our experiments, reappraisal affordances were strongly associated with emotion regulation choice (greater reappraisal affordances predicted higher use of reappraisal). Further, stimulus intensity was independently associated with emotion regulation choice in each study. Our results also demonstrated that the discrete emotion of disgust (but not other discrete emotions) is a previously unidentified external factor of emotion regulation choice. We discuss the implications of the current findings.