Beyond Preferences: Investigating the Relationship Between Choice and Instruction in an Emotion Regulation Context
Catalina Phe
Department of Psychology
Faculty Supervisor: Gaurav Suri
The process of understanding how humans choose a particular emotion regulation (ER) strategy for a given situation is theoretically and clinically consequential. Prior research (e.g., Sheppes et al., 2011), has demonstrated that individuals prefer distraction in high-intensity contexts and reappraisal in low-intensity contexts. Using a Stroop-like design, we sought to examine how such preferences might interact with explicit instructions to use a specific ER strategy (e.g., an instruction to reappraise in a low-intensity context). In our experiments, participants viewed affective images with varying intensity levels. In some conditions, they freely chose an ER strategy, while in others, they were instructed to use a specific ER strategy by color-coded borders. In congruent trials the instructed strategy matched participant preferences, and incongruent trials it did not. We measured reaction times to identify the instructed strategy. Preliminary results (n=19) showed longer reaction times during incongruent reappraisal trials compared to congruent reappraisal trials. There were no differences in reaction time for distraction trials. While these findings need to be replicated in a larger study, they suggest the presence of interactions between ER instructions and context-based ER strategy preferences.
References Sheppes, G., Scheibe, S., Suri, G., & Gross, J. J. (2011). Emotion-regulation choice. Psychological Science.