Achieving the same for less: Improving mood depletes blood glucose for people with poor (but not good) emotion control

Abstract

Previous studies have found that acts of self-control like emotion regulation deplete blood glucose levels. The present experiment investigated the hypothesis that the extent to which people's blood glucose levels decline during emotion regulation attempts is influenced by whether they believe themselves to be good or poor at emotion control. We found that although good and poor emotion regulators were equally able to achieve positive and negative moods, the blood glucose of poor emotion regulators was reduced after performing an affect-improving task, whereas the blood glucose of good emotion regulators remained unchanged. As evidence suggests that glucose is a limited energy resource upon which self-control relies, the implication is that good emotion regulators are able to achieve the same positive mood with less cost to their self-regulatory resource. Thus, depletion may not be an inevitable consequence of engaging in emotion regulation.

Keywords:

• Emotion regulation
• Self-control
• Blood glucose
• Ego depletion
• Resources

Acknowledgments

The support of the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) UK is gratefully acknowledged (RES-060-25-0044: “Emotion regulation of others and self [EROS]”).

Notes

¹A pilot experiment using emotion regulation scenarios in a between-subjects design (affect-improving N=203; affect-worsening N=196) confirmed that people perceive that affect-worsening is easier than affect-improving, verifying the validity of our comparison condition. In the study, participants reported that it would be easier to get into a sad mood from a happy mood (M=13.85, SD=5.07) than to get into a happy mood from a sad mood (M=11.17, SD=4.83), F(1, 396) = 29.27, p<.01, η_p ²=.07. A full account of this study can be obtained from the first author.

²Fifteen participants completed the affect-improving task first and sixteen completed the affect-worsening task first. There were no significant differences between these two groups in terms of their pre- or post-task moods and blood glucose levels, Fs < 3.34, ps>.05, η_p ²<.11.

³Music collection 1 comprised Rachmaninov's Vocalise op34 no.14, Vaughan Williams's ‘The Lark Ascending (conclusion)’, and Bach's Goldberg Variations BWV 988 Aria. Music collection 2 comprised Mozart's Piano Concerto 21 in C ‘Elvira Madigan’, Debussy's Suite Bergamasque ‘Clair de Lune’, and Brahms's Serenade no.2 in A Major ‘Allegro Moderato’.

⁴A pilot sample (N=31) who were played the same collections of music but were instructed merely to listen to it verified that the music was not responsible for the changes that we observed in participants’ moods. For these participants, there was no difference in mood before (M=5.33, SD=0.73) versus after (M=5.44, SD=0.65) the music, F(1, 30) = 0.68, p=.42, η_p ²=.02.