Regulating emotions with experience – the effectiveness of reappraisal inventiveness depends on situational familiarity

ABSTRACT

Background and Objectives

Previous research identified cognitive reappraisal as an adaptive emotion regulation strategy. However, theories on emotion regulation flexibility suggest that reappraisal effectiveness (RE) may depend on an individual’s familiarity with stressors. In this study, we expect high reappraisal inventiveness (RI), i.e., the generation of many and categorically different reappraisals, to increase RE for individuals with low situational familiarity. Individuals with high situational familiarity, however, would be more effective with low RI.

Design

A total of 148 participants completed the Script-based Reappraisal Task, in which they were presented with fear- and anger-eliciting scripts. Depending on trial type, participants were instructed to reappraise (reappraisal-trial) or react naturally (control-trial) to the scripts. After each trial, participants indicated affective states and reappraisals. We assessed RI and calculated RE-scores as difference between affect ratings in reappraisal- and control-trials for valence and arousal. Finally, participants rated the familiarity with each situation.

Results

The results indicated a significant moderating effect of situational familiarity on the relationship between RI and RE-valence (not RE-arousal). The moderation was mainly driven by a detrimental effect of RI for individuals with high situational familiarity.

Conclusions

Our results hint at the importance of individual experience with emotional content in the research of cognitive reappraisal.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotion regulation
• cognitive reappraisal
• reappraisal inventiveness
• reappraisal effectiveness
• situational familiarity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Ethics approval

This study was performed in line with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. Approval was granted by the Ethics Committee of Johannes-Gutenberg-University Mainz.

Consent to participate

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Consent for publication

Consent for publication was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in Open Science Framework at http://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/T5YGH .

Additional information

Funding

The current study received funding from the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) as part of SFB1193 on the “Neurobiology of resilience” (Project C05).