Interference resolution moderates the impact of rumination and reappraisal on affective experiences in daily life

Abstract

Research has shown that cognitive control processes play a central role in emotion regulation. While most research has examined whether individual differences in such processes are related to the use of these strategies, a crucial next step involves examining whether such differences influence their impact on people's feelings, especially in normal daily life. The present study examined whether impairments in cognitive control (measured using an affective interference resolution task) moderate the impact of using rumination and reappraisal on affective experiences in everyday life (assessed using experience sampling methods). Multilevel analyses revealed that difficulties removing previously relevant negative information from working memory were associated with a larger increase in negative affect following rumination, and smaller increase and decrease in positive and negative affect, respectively, following reappraisal. These findings show that impaired interference resolution for negative information aggravates the deleterious effects of rumination and curbs the benefits of reappraisal in daily life.

Keywords:

• Emotion regulation
• Interference resolution
• Rumination
• Reappraisal

Notes

¹We used the Dutch word piekeren for rumination. While the word “rumineren” exists in Dutch, it is not used in everyday language. In contrast, “piekeren” is the term that is used in everyday language to refer to rumination (and worrying). Piekeren, thus, broadly refers to recurrent negative thinking.

²The proportion of trials was taken from D'Esposito, Postle, Jonides, and Smith (1999).

³All 100 participants completed the affective interference resolution task. For data preparation, we used data of all participants.

⁴We ran the same models with NA as a Level 1 covariate and results remained the same.

⁵We ran all the models while controlling for depression and depression–interference resolution interactions, and results remained the same.

⁶We also wanted to test whether there is an effect of time on affective experience. It is possible that affective experience may have decreased or increased over repeated assessments, which would then be a confound to the current results. For example, participants may just experience less NA over time, and this may be independent of the kind of emotion-regulation strategy used or the impact of interference resolution on the effectiveness of this strategy. To examine this possibility, we ran multilevel models (separately for PA and NA) with measurement occasion as a predictor. Results showed that although NA did not change over measurement occasions (β=−0.00, SE=0.02, p=.87), participants’ level of PA decreased over time (β=−0.10, SE=0.03, p<.01). From this result, it seemed reasonable to control for measurement occasion when examining the moderating effect of interference resolution on the relationship between emotion regulation and change in PA. When controlling for measurement occasion, the results for NA remained the same, but the results for PA changed in the expected direction for both the uncorrected raw scores and controlling for ER mean. That is, difficulties removing previously relevant negative information from WM led to a larger decrease in PA when ruminating (uncorrected: γ₂₁=−.04, SE=0.02, p<.05; controlling for ER mean: γ₂₁=−.04, SE=0.02, p=.01), and a smaller increase in PA when reappraising (uncorrected: γ₂₁=−.05, SE=0.01, p<.01; controlling for ER mean: γ₂₁=−.05, SE=0.01, p<.01).