Emotion Regulation Choice: The Role of Environmental Affordances

Publication Date

7-4-2018

Document Type

Article

Organizational Units

College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences, Psychology

Keywords

Emotion regulation, Choice, Cognitive reappraisal, Affordances, Emotional intensity

Abstract

Which emotion regulation strategy one uses in a given context can have profound affective, cognitive, and social consequences. It is therefore important to understand the determinants of emotion regulation choice. Many prior studies have examined person-specific, internal determinants of emotion regulation choice. Recently, it has become clear that external variables that are properties of the stimulus can also influence emotion regulation choice. In the present research, we consider whether reappraisal affordances, defined as the opportunities for reinterpretation of a stimulus that are inherent in that stimulus, can shape individuals’ emotion regulation choices. We show that reappraisal affordances have stability across people and across time (Study 1), and are confounded with emotional intensity for a standardised set of picture stimuli (Study 2). Since emotional intensity has been shown to drive emotion regulation choice, we construct a context in which emotional intensity is separable from reappraisal affordances (Study 3) and use this context to show that reappraisal affordances powerfully influence emotion regulation choice even when emotional intensity and discrete emotions are taken into account (Study 4).

Copyright Date

9-1-2017

Copyright Statement / License for Reuse

All Rights Reserved
All Rights Reserved.

Rights Holder

Informa UK Limited

Provenance

Received from author

Language

English (eng)

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by Informa UK Limited. User is responsible for all copyright compliance. This article was originally published as:

Suri, G., Sheppes, G., Young, G., Abraham, D., McRae, K., & Gross, J. J. (2018). Emotion regulation choice: The role of environmental affordances. Cognition and Emotion, 32(5), 963-971. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2017.1371003

Publication Title

Cognition and Emotion

Volume

32

Issue

5

First Page

963

Last Page

971

ISSN

1464-0600

PubMed ID

28862078

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