Use of Cognitive Reappraisal for Regulating Emotion

One of the most important self-regulatory challenges of humankind is the voluntary and adaptive regulation of emotion. Cognitive reappraisal represents a particularly flexible form of emotion regulation, which involves generating alternative interpretations of an event, such that its emotional meaning is altered. In our research, we leverage insights from appraisal theory to better understand effects of cognitive reappraisal.

Does degree of environmental affordances influence emotion regulation success? Because top-down regulatory processes interact with bottom-up stimulus features that trigger appraisals, degree of environmental affordances may determine success of emotion regulation. We are currently testing this hypothesis by examining the malleability of emotional responses to various types of film clips in a multi-measure psychophysiology experiment. Check back soon to read up on our findings!

Do different explicit regulation goals have different effects on regulated emotional responding? In this study, we are using an affective picture paradigm, where participants first view the picture to capture their initial emotional response and then are instructed to cognitively reappraise the picture according to different regulation goals. While participants perform this task, we obtain physiological, behavioral, and experiential measures to examine how their emotional response changes from uninstructed viewing to regulated responding and how regulated responding differs between different regulation goals.

Last modified Friday, 11-Oct-2013 22:03:54 PDT