In our daily lives, we encounter a multitude of emotional challenges in various contexts, necessitating the use of diverse emotion regulation strategies for adaptive responses (Aldao et al., 2015; Bonanno and Burton, 2013). These strategies require cognitive control, making them cognitively demanding processes (Gross, 2015b; Ochsner et al., 2012). Yet, it remains unknown whether different strategies impose different levels of cognitive effort. This thesis aims to address this gap in the literature by conducting a comparative analysis of the cognitive effort required for specific emotion regulation strategies. Our research takes a comprehensive approach to evaluating effort, utilizing physiological and subjective measures. In the field of emotion regulation choice, the role of effort remains less explored. We seek to deepen the understanding by not only investigating the self-reported reasons behind participants’ choice behaviour, but also by employing rigorous statistical analyses to identify the factors that influence these choices. Prior studies on the determinants of emotion regulation choice have faced certain limitations. While some determinants favouring specific strategies have been identified, there is a lack of information regarding the strategies that are not chosen. Additionally, it is unclear to what extent individuals prefer their chosen strategy over other available options. These issues can be addressed by assigning subjective values to all choice options, as these values are central to the decisionmaking process. This thesis has developed and validated a novel paradigm that measures the individual subjective values associated with emotion regulation strategies. We not only examined whether these values can effectively predict actual choice behaviour, but also delved into the variables that predict these subjective values, offering a holistic perspective on the complex interplay between cognitive effort and emotion regulation choice. To enhance comprehension on the impact of cognitive effort on emotion regulation, Study 1 and Study 2 aimed to compare the necessary effort between the two emotion regulation strategies distancing and expressive suppression. To our knowledge, this was the first work striving to comprehensively examine effort during emotion regulation by assessing it through various means. Two studies were carried out to examine the impact of cognitive effort on emotion regulation choice. Specifically, it was explored whether decision-making behaviour is more influenced by the cognitive effort required to implement the strategy or the effectiveness of the strategy. To answer these research questions, cognitive effort and effectiveness of distancing and suppression were quantified through subjective (ratings) and physiological (pupillometry, heart rate) measures. To explore choice behaviour, participants were instructed to finally employ either of the strategies again. Our findings highlight that the strategies did not differ substantially in terms of physiological effort, yet they did exhibit substantial disparities in the subjectively perceived effort. These differences between strategies also manifested in their choice behaviour: Two thirds of the participants opted for suppression once again, despite its lower effectiveness. Participants cited lower effort as the reason for their choice. By measuring effort through various means, these two studies provide a comprehensive understanding of the cognitive effort involved in emotion regulation. Furthermore, the results on the determinants of emotion regulation choice not only enrich research, but also provide starting points for practical applications. Paradigms commonly employed in emotion regulation choice research - as in Study 1 and Study 2 - suffer from a drawback as they entail a loss of information, providing only binary data concerning whether or not a strategy was chosen. However, it is unclear to what extent the favoured strategy was preferred compared to the alternative options. In Study 3, a registered report, the objective was to develop a novel paradigm to determine the subjective values attributed to each emotion regulation strategy at hand. The cognitive effort discounting paradigm by Westbrook et al. (2013) provided the foundation, but was developed and extended further. Participants completed an emotion regulation paradigm whereby they were prompted to employ three strategies - distraction, distancing, and expressive suppression. Next, we conducted our novel discounting paradigm to determine the subjective value of each strategy. In our study, we were not only able to show that subjective values predict subsequent choice behaviour, but that, in addition to self-assessed utility, subjective effort in particular was predictive of subjective values. Our innovative paradigm has extensive potential applications, even beyond the field of emotion regulation. By utilising this paradigm, it becomes feasible to ascertain subjective values of demand levels that lack any objective effort hierarchy. In summary, the present thesis makes an important contribution to deepen the understanding of the role of cognitive effort in emotion regulation and emotion regulation choice. Cognitive effort and regulatory success were comprehensively examined by assessing trait measures (questionnaires), subjective ratings and peripheral physiological measures (pupillometry, electromyography, electrocardiogram). Our main finding, which could be replicated across three pre-registered studies, shows that the use of strategies is associated with different levels of subjective effort for individuals. This leads to the majority of individuals choosing the strategy that is associated with less effort for them, rather than the strategy that is more effective. Finally, the thesis outlines a novel paradigm that enables the calculation of individual subjective values attributed to emotion regulation strategies. This facilitates a more comprehensive evaluation of the determinants of emotion regulation choice, as well as the strength of their preference for such strategies. Thus, it adds to the expanding literature on the field of emotion regulation flexibility by presenting starting points for assessing individuals’ flexibility and adaptability.:Contents
Summary
Preface
1. Theoretical Background
1.1. Fundamentals of emotions and emotion regulation
1.1.1. Emotions
1.1.2. Emotion regulation
1.2. The cognitive control of emotions
1.2.1. Cognitive control and cognitive effort
1.2.2. Cognitive effort and emotion regulation
1.3. Peripheral physiological consequences of intentional emotion regulation
1.4. Flexible emotion regulation
1.4.1. The extended process model of emotion regulation
1.5. Emotion regulation choice
1.5.1. A conceptual framework of emotion regulation choice
1.5.2. Determinants of emotion regulation choice
2. Scope of the thesis and study overview
3. Effort beats effectiveness in emotion regulation choice: Differences between
suppression and distancing in subjective and physiological measures (Study 1
and 2)
3.1. Theoretical Background
3.1.1. Effort and emotion regulation
3.1.2. The present study
3.2. Study 1
3.2.1. Method
3.2.2. Results
3.3. Study 2
3.3.1. Method
3.3.2. Results
3.4. Exploratory analyses
3.4.1. Statistics
3.4.2. Results
3.5. Discussion
3.5.1. Effort plays a crucial role in the selection of an ER strategy
3.5.2. Individual differences in personality traits do not explain individual
differences in arousal and effort
3.5.3. Subjective arousal and effort are not reflected in physiological arousal
and effort
3.6. Limitations
3.7. Conclusion
4. Estimating individual subjective values of emotion regulation strategies
4.1. Introduction
4.2. Method
4.2.1. Ethics information
4.2.2. Pilot data
4.2.3. Design
4.2.4. Sampling plan
4.2.5. Analysis plan
4.3. Results
4.3.1. Participants and descriptive statistics
4.3.2. Confirmatory analyses
4.3.3. Exploratory analyses
4.4. Discussion
4.4.1. Ecological validity of subjective values of emotion regulation strategies
4.4.2. Trait character of subjective values
4.4.3. Limitations
4.4.4. Conclusion
5. General Discussion
5.1. Summary of results
5.2. The role of cognitive effort in emotion regulation
5.2.1. Effects of effort in the selection stage
5.2.2. Effects of effort in the implementation stage
5.2.3. Post-regulation effects of effort
5.3. Regulatory goals in emotion regulation
5.3.1. The interaction of regulatory goals and cognitive effort
5.4. Individual subjective values of choice options
5.4.1. Factors influencing subjective values
5.4.2. Subjective values: States or traits?
5.5. Methodological considerations
5.5.1. Experimental design
5.5.2. Assessment of physiological effort and arousal
5.6. Future directions
5.7. Conclusion
References
Appendix A. Supplementary Information Study 1 and Study 2
Appendix B. Supplementary Information Study 3
List of Figures
List of Tables
List of Abbreviations
Erklärung
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:DRESDEN/oai:qucosa:de:qucosa:89460 |
| Date | 07 February 2024 |
| Creators | Scheffel, Christoph |
| Contributors | Strobel, Alexander, Basten, Ulrike, Technische Universität Dresden |
| Source Sets | Hochschulschriftenserver (HSSS) der SLUB Dresden |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion, doc-type:doctoralThesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/doctoralThesis, doc-type:Text |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
| Relation | 10.1111/psyp.13908, 10.1038/s41598-023-40034-7 |
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