Choose change: Situation modification, distraction, and reappraisal in mild versus intense negative situations

Abstract

Despite the theoretical importance and applied potential of situation modification as an emotion regulation strategy, empirical research on how people change situations to regulate their emotions is scarce. Meanwhile, existing paradigms typically allowed participants to avoid the entire situation, thus confounding situation modification with situation selection. In our current experiments, participants could choose between partially modifying their negative emotional environment without avoiding it entirely and two well-established emotion regulation strategies (reappraisal and distraction). Participants did choose situation modification (Experiments 1-2) and they did so more often for intense than for mild stimuli in Experiment 2. In addition, modifying the stimulus display effectively helped downregulating negative affect (Experiments 1-2). Finally, in both experiments, participants opted more for distraction for intense compared to mild stimuli, while they opted more for reappraisal for mild compared to intense stimuli. Presenting a first step in developing a paradigm that allows people to exert control over but to not avoid emotion-provoking situations, we thus show that changing one's environment helps regulating one's emotions. More generally, our findings indicate that people prefer to regulate their emotions using disengagement strategies (situation modification and distraction) with high-intensity relative to low-intensity negative situations, while they prefer engagement strategies (reappraisal) with low-intensity relative to high-intensity negative situations.

Acting against your own interests: The tension between emotion regulation preference and efficacy and its implications for individuals with depressive symptoms

“…The results are presented in Fig 1 . We predicted and found a significant main effect of intensity F(1,49) = 12.5, p = .001, Z 2 p = .20, indicating that emotion regulation attempts were more effective in high (M = 159, SD = 18.18) compared to low intensity (M = 119.3, SD = 15.9) negative images. This finding is in line with prior evidence showing that the benefit of regulatory strategies increases in conditions where they are most needed, as there is more negative emotion to regulate [26,32]. In addition, we found a significant main effect of strategy F(1,49) = 7.7, p = .01, Z 2 p = .13, demonstrating that reappraisal (M = 151.4, SD = 18) was more effective than distraction (M = 126.9, SD = 15.34) in reducing distress.…”

“…We therefore hypothesized that individuals would favor distraction in high-intensity conditions and reappraisal in low-intensity conditions. We further hypothesized that depressive and state/trait anxiety symptoms would not affect these preferences [ 32 ].…”

“…The process-specific timing hypothesis is widely supported by studies that allow participants to choose between distraction and reappraisal in low- and high-intensity conditions [ 6 , 29 , 31 , 32 ]. These studies reveal that when given a choice, participants prefer distraction under high-intensity situations and reappraisal under low-intensity situations.…”

Food Desires, Negative Emotions and Behaviour Change Techniques: A Computational Analysis

“…For instance, reappraisal is considered quite an adaptive strategy [8] and remains so even if the intensity of the negative emotions/desires is low. This is because the reappraisal of low intensity emotions requires the activation of fewer brain parts as compared to high intensity emotions [19,20]. Therefore, the model employs reappraisal only for low intensity negative emotions.…”

“…Therefore, the model employs reappraisal only for low intensity negative emotions. Similarly, situation modification is considered a better option in a situation which induces a high intensity of negative emotions or desires [20]. The third strategy used in the model in this paper is problem solving.…”