Open AccessPerformance and belief-based emotion regulation capacity and tendency: Mapping links with cognitive flexibility and perceived stress.
Author(s) -
João F. Guassi Moreira,
Razia S. Sahi,
Emilia Ninova,
Carolyn Parkinson,
Jennifer A. Silvers
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
emotion
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.261
H-Index - 140
eISSN - 1931-1516
pISSN - 1528-3542
DOI - 10.1037/emo0000768
Subject(s) - cognitive reappraisal , psychology , expressive suppression , psycinfo , flexibility (engineering) , cognition , cognitive appraisal , perception , stress (linguistics) , developmental psychology , social psychology , medline , linguistics , statistics , philosophy , mathematics , neuroscience , political science , law
Cognitive reappraisal is among the most effective and well-studied emotion regulation strategies humans have at their disposal. Here, in 250 healthy adults across 2 preregistered studies, we examined whether reappraisal capacity (the ability to reappraise) and tendency (the propensity to reappraise) differentially relate to perceived stress. We also investigated whether cognitive flexibility, a skill thought to support reappraisal, accounted for associations between reappraisal capacity and tendency and perceived stress but found no evidence for this hypothesis. Both Studies 1 and 2 robustly showed that reappraisal tendency was associated with perceived stress, whereas a significant relationship between reappraisal capacity and perceived stress was only observed in Study 2. Further, Study 2 suggested that self-reported beliefs about one's emotion regulation capacity and tendency were predictive of wellbeing, whereas no such associations were observed with performance-based assessments of capacity and tendency. These data suggest that self-reported perceptions of reappraisal skills may be more predictive of wellbeing than actual reappraisal skills. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).