Effort beats effectiveness in emotion regulation choice: Differences between suppression and distancing in subjective and physiological measures

Abstract

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 < .001, ηp² = .20; Study 2: p < .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.

Built to last: Theta and delta changes in resting‐state EEG activity after regulating emotions

“…However, a direct comparison of ER strategies would shed light on whether different strategies require different amounts of cognitive effort, discriminating between distinct effort measures (Steele, 2020). Furthermore, the influence of situational factors and individual differences on subjective and physiological cognitive effort during ER is still unclear (Scheffel et al., 2021).…”

“…Also, persistent changes in the theta range seem to reflect a form of neural fatigue (Nelson et al, 2021;Avvenuti et al, 2021). ER requires a certain amount of cognitive effort, but there is evidence of differences between strategies (Richards & Gross, 1999;Scheffel et al, 2021). For example, based on the process model of ER (Gross, 1998(Gross, , 2014, suppression is cognitively demanding and effortful, as it consists in controlling emotional responses constantly (Richards & Gross, 2000).…”

Effects of emotion regulation on EEG microstates – Valence and arousal are not processed sequentially

“…Data had been collected as part of a larger project by Scheffel et al (2021), which was approved by the university's institutional review board (EK 286062019). The EEG data had not been analyzed yet when we preregistered the present analysis.…”

Emotion Regulation Strategy Choices Following Aversive Self-Awareness in People with Nonsuicidal Self-Injury or Indirect Self-Injury

“…Strategies also varied in how much effort they required of participants, with strategies such as doing nothing or eating a treat involving relatively low effort and reappraisal requiring a greater effort from participants. In light of recent work indicating that perceived effort plays a role in emotion regulation choice (Scheffel et al, 2021), future research could take perceived effort into account when examining relationships between self-injury and emotion regulation.…”