Individuals have a repertoire of emotion regulation (ER) strategies at their disposal, which they can use more or less flexibly. In ER flexibility research, strategies that facilitate goal achievement are considered adaptive and therefore are subjectively valuable. Individuals are motivated to reduce their emotional arousal effectively and to avoid cognitive effort. Perceived costs of ER strategies in the form of effort, however, are highly subjective. Subjective values (SVs) should therefore represent a trade-off between effectiveness and subjectively required cognitive effort. However, SVs of ER strategies have not been determined so far. We present a new paradigm for quantifying individual SVs of ER strategies by offering monetary values for ER strategies in an iterative process. N = 120 participants first conducted an ER paradigm with the strategies distraction, distancing, and suppression. Afterwards, individual SVs were determined using the new CAD paradigm. SVs significantly predicted later choice for an ER strategy (χ2 (4, n = 119) = 115.40, p < 0.001, BF10 = 1.62 × 1021). Further, SVs were associated with Corrugator activity (t (5, 618.96) = 2.09, p = 0.037, f2 = 0.001), subjective effort (t (5, 618.96) = − 13.98, p < 0.001, f2 = 0.035), and self-reported utility (t (5, 618.96) = 29.49, p < 0.001, f2 = 0.155). SVs were further associated with self-control (t (97.97) = 2.04, p = 0.044, f2 = 0.002), but not with flexible ER. With our paradigm, we were able to determine subjective values. The trait character of the values will be discussed. Protocol registration The stage 1 protocol for this Registered Report was accepted in principle on July 19, 2022. The protocol, as accepted by the journal, can be found at: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/FN9BT.

Emotion regulation (ER) can be implemented by different strategies which differ in their capacity to alter emotional responding. What all strategies have in common is that cognitive control must be exercised in order to implement them. The aim of the present preregistered study was to investigate whether the two ER strategies expressive suppression and distancing require different amounts of cognitive effort and whether effort is associated with personality traits. Effort was assessed subjectively via ratings and objectively via pupillometry and heart period. In two studies, N = 110 and N = 52 healthy adults conducted an ER paradigm. Participants used suppression and distancing during inspection of positive and negative pictures. They also had the choice to reapply either of the strategies at the end of the paradigm. Although distancing was more effective in downregulation of subjective arousal (Study 1: p &lt; .001, ηp² = .20; Study 2: p &lt; .001, ηp² = .207), about two thirds reapplied suppression, because it was perceived as less effortful. Effort was rated significantly lower for suppression compared to distancing (Study 1: p = .042, ηp² = .04; Study 2: p = .002, ηp² = .13). However, differences in effort were not reflected in pupillary data or heart period. Broad and narrow personality traits were neither associated with the preferred strategy, nor with subjective or physiological effort measures. Findings suggest that people tend to use the ER strategy that is perceived as less effortful, even though it might not be the most effective strategy.

Individuals have a repertoire of emotion regulation (ER) strategies at their disposal, which they can use more or less flexibly. In ER flexibility research, strategies that facilitate goal achievement are considered adaptive and therefore are subjectively valuable. Individuals are motivated to reduce their emotional arousal effectively and to avoid cognitive effort. Perceived costs of ER strategies in the form of effort, however, are highly subjective. Subjective values (SVs) should therefore represent a trade-off between effectiveness and subjectively required cognitive effort. However, SVs of ER strategies have not been determined so far. We present a paradigm that is suitable for determining individual SVs of ER strategies. Using a multilevel modelling approach, it will be investigated whether individual SVs can be explained by effectiveness (subjective arousal, facial muscle activity) and subjective effort. Relations of SVs to personality traits will be explored.

Neuroimaging functional connectivity analyses have shown that the negative coupling between amygdala and cortical regions is linked to better emotion regulation (ER) in experimental task settings. However, less is known about the neural correlates of ER traits or dispositions. The present study aimed to (1) replicate the findings of differential cortico-limbic coupling during resting state depending on the dispositional use of emotion regulation strategies. Furthermore, the study aimed to (2) extend prior findings by examining whether differences in cortico-limbic coupling during resting state predict experiential and neuronal ER success in a standard ER task. To this end, N=107 healthy adults completed the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ), underwent an 8-min resting-state fMRI acquisition and completed a reappraisal task during fMRI. Functional connectivity maps of basolateral and centromedial amygdala nuclei were estimated with a seed-based approach regarding associations with regions of the prefrontal cortex, and were then correlated with ERQ scores as well as experiential and neuronal ER success. All hypotheses and the analysis plan are preregistered at https://osf.io/8wsgu. Opposed to prior findings, we were not able to replicate a correlation of dispositional ER strategy use with functional connectivity between amygdala and PFC regions (p &gt; 0.05, FWE-corrected). Furthermore, there was no association of experiential and neuronal reappraisal success with functional connectivity between amygdala and insula as well as PFC (p &gt; 0.05, FWE-corrected). The present preregistered study calls into question the reported association between individual differences in resting state cortico-limbic connectivity and dispositional use of ER strategies. However, ongoing advances in functional brain imaging and distributed network approaches may leverage the identification of reliable functional connectivity patterns that underlie successful emotion regulation.

It is an open question in cognitive emotion regulation research how emotion regulation unfolds over time, and whether the brain regions involved in down-regulation are also recruited during up-regulation of emotions. As a replication and extension of our preceding study, we conducted an fMRI study in N=47 young healthy adults on the neural basis of up- and down-regulation of negative and neutral pictures during the immediate stimulation phase as well as after short- and long-term delays. For this, we employed three experimental conditions – down-regulation (distance), maintenance (permit), and up-regulation (intensify) – for negative and neutral stimuli, and investigated the neural responses during the stimulation and post-stimulation phase as well as during re-exposure after 10 min and after 1 week. We observed the following main results: first, greater activation in emotion-generating regions such as the amygdala in the permit vs. distance and the intensify vs. distance comparisons, but not in the intensify vs. permit comparison. Second, greater activation in emotion-regulating regions such as the right inferior parietal and right superior / middle frontal cortex activation in the distance vs. permit and the distance vs. intensify contrasts, but not the permit vs. intensify contrast. Third, the activation difference between distance and intensify within the amygdala reversed after the regulation period. Fourth, previous emotion regulation did not influence the activation during re-exposure, neither after 10 minutes nor after 1 week. Taken together, the results provide a partial replication of persistent effects observed in our preceding study, indicate different neural systems for up- and down-regulation, and demonstrate that a broader perspective on emotion regulation can be achieved by simultaneously considering different goals, directions, and strategies of emotion regulation in a single experiment.