The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.
The Interdisciplinary Center at Herzliya, Israel.
Pers Soc Psychol Bull. 2020 Mar;46(3):469-484. doi: 10.1177/0146167219861432. Epub 2019 Jul 19.
Emotion regulation strategies have been typically studied independently of the specific emotions people try to change by using them. However, to the extent that negative emotions are inherently different from one another, people may choose different means to change them. Focusing on fear and sadness, we first mapped emotion-related content to theoretically matched reappraisal tactics. We then tested how frequently people choose such reappraisal tactics when regulating fear and sadness (Studies 1, 2, and 4a). As predicted, people were most likely to select reappraisal tactics that targeted content that was particularly relevant to the specific emotion they tried to regulate. Next, we tested whether such choices were driven by differences in the efficacy (Study 3), perceived efficacy (Study 4b), and anticipated effort (Study 4c) of regulation. Our findings demonstrate that the means people select to regulate their emotions depend on which emotions they try to regulate.
情绪调节策略通常是在不考虑人们试图改变的特定情绪的情况下独立研究的。然而，由于负性情绪彼此之间存在本质上的差异，人们可能会选择不同的方法来改变它们。本文聚焦于恐惧和悲伤，我们首先将情绪相关的内容映射到理论上匹配的再评价策略上。然后，我们测试了人们在调节恐惧和悲伤时选择这些再评价策略的频率（研究 1、2 和 4a）。正如预测的那样，人们最有可能选择针对他们试图调节的特定情绪的特定内容的再评价策略。接下来，我们测试了这些选择是否受到调节效果（研究 3）、感知效果（研究 4b）和预期努力（研究 4c）的差异驱动。我们的研究结果表明，人们选择调节情绪的方式取决于他们试图调节的情绪。
