Looking on the bright side: the impact of ambivalent images on emotion regulation choice

ABSTRACT

Previous research has found that people choose to reappraise low intensity images more often than high intensity images. However, this research does not account for image ambivalence, which is presence of both positive and negative cues in a stimulus. The purpose of this research was to determine differences in ambivalence in high intensity and low intensity images used in previous research (experiments 1–2), and if ambivalence played a role in emotion regulation choice in addition to intensity (experiments 3–4). Experiments 1 and 2 found that the low intensity images were more ambivalent than the high intensity images. Experiment 2 further found a positive relationship between ambivalence of an image and reappraisal affordances. Experiments 3 and 4 found that people chose to reappraise ambivalent images more often than non-ambivalent images, and they also chose to reappraise low intensity images more often than high intensity images. These experiments support the idea that ambivalence is a factor in emotion regulation choice. Future research should consider the impact ambivalent stimuli have on emotion regulation, including the potential for leveraging ambivalent stimuli to improve one’s emotion regulation ability.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotion regulation
• ambivalence
• emotion regulation choice
• reappraisal
• distraction

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by a Louisiana Board of Regents – Research Competitiveness Subprogram grant and an NSERC Discovery grant to S.G.G., and The Bruce Whittlesea Scholarship to S.B.H.

Disclosure statement

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

Data availability statement

The data from the four experiments that support the findings of this study are openly available in Open Science Framework https://osf.io/ckujd/.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (Discovery).