Unconscious emotion regulation: Nonconscious reappraisal decreases emotion-related physiological reactivity during frustration

Abstract

Reappraisal of negative events is known to be useful in decreasing their emotional impact. However, existent evidence for this conclusion mostly relies on conscious, deliberate reappraisal that comes with the cost of cognitive efforts. The aim of the present study was to compare emotion regulation effects of conscious and unconscious reappraisal, which has been shown to be less costly in previous studies. Subjects randomly assigned to an unconscious reappraisal, conscious reappraisal, and control condition performed a frustrating arithmetic task. Subjective emotional experience and heart-rate reactivity were recorded. Participants primed with unconscious reappraisal showed the same decrease in heart-rate reactivity as those explicitly instructed to reappraise. In addition, the unconscious reappraisal group did not show reductions in subjective negative emotion, whereas this was significantly decreased in the conscious reappraisal group. Heart-rate reactivity was positively correlated with negative emotion ratings and negatively correlated with the positive emotion ratings. These results suggest that unconscious reappraisal is only effective in decreasing physiological consequences of frustrating emotion, but not in reducing subjective experience.

Keywords:

• Unconscious
• Emotion regulation
• Reappraisal
• Frustration
• Heart rates

The authors thank Professor Agneta Fischer for the help with English refinement of the paper, and thank the two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments.

Preparation of this paper was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number NSFC 31170989] and [grant number 31371042], by the Keygrant Project of Chinese Ministry of Education [NO311032] and by the special grant for postdoctoral research in Chongqing [Xm2014059].

The authors thank Professor Agneta Fischer for the help with English refinement of the paper, and thank the two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments.

Preparation of this paper was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number NSFC 31170989] and [grant number 31371042], by the Keygrant Project of Chinese Ministry of Education [NO311032] and by the special grant for postdoctoral research in Chongqing [Xm2014059].