The Effects Of Emotion Regulation On Negative Emotion：Goals And Timing Matter

The studies in the field of emotion regulation mainly focus on the effect of emotion regulationon individual’s adaptability with the present researches laying stress on two aspects. First is thelevel of awareness of emotion regulation (Conscious emotion regulation vs. Unconscious emotionregulation). Although the researchers who explored emotion regulation have confirmed thatemotion regulation can also operate on the unconscious level, most of the present studies ofemotion regulation mainly focused on conscious emotion regulation. The empirical research ontheory expectation that "unconscious emotion regulation may be a more effective way to deal withnegative emotions" is still lack and needs further investigation and verification. Second is exploringone or more of the effects of emotion regulation strategies at the macro-level timing which refers topaying attention to when implement emotion regulation is more effective. Researchers examine theeffect of timing on emotion regulation by manipulating the strategies’ start-up timing point in theemotion-triggering event. The results indicate that strategies that start operating earlier (anticipatoryregulation) in the emotion episode are more effective than strategies that start operating later(online regulation). This phenomenon is called "the macro-level timing effects". Moreover,whether the effects of unconscious emotion regulation will be subject to the macro-level timingeffects, what’s the difference in the effects of conscious and unconscious emotion regulation at themacro-level timing(anticipatory vs. online)? Research hasn’t examined these two in combination.This study aims to explore which type of emotion regulation is more effective and whenimplement emotion regulation is more effective with two experiments. The first experiment aims toinnovate the emotion regulation priming paradigm with supraliminal and subliminal words primingto activate the specific goals of conscious and unconscious emotional regulation, to prepare for themanipulation of anticipatory and online regulation of the second study. The second experimentsaims to further examine the differences of the effects between conscious and unconscious emotionregulation at the macro-level timing, and comprehensively investigate the effects of the strategies’start-up timing point on two types of emotion regulation. Conclusions are as follows:(1) The specific goals of conscious and unconscious emotional regulation could be effectivelyactivated by supraliminal and subliminal words priming, and the corresponding regulation behaviorand process of subjects were induced. (2) The strategies’ start-up timing point affects the effects of conscious emotion regulation:strategies that start operating early (anticipatory) in the emotion episode are more effective thanstrategies that start operating later (online).(3) The strategies’ start-up timing point has no effect on unconscious emotion regulation:unconscious emotion regulation can effectively reduce the negative emotional responses no matterstrategies that start operating early (anticipatory) and later (online) in the emotion episode.(4) The strategies’ start-up timing point affects the differences of the effects betweenconscious and unconscious emotion regulation and there appears the separation trend on both theregulation effect on physiological responses and emotional experience. In the physiologicalresponse indicators, the strategies’ start-up timing point affects the differences of the effectsbetween the two types of emotion regulation: at the level of anticipatory, the effects between thetwo types of emotion regulation were equally effective; at the level of the online, the effects ofunconscious emotion regulation are better than the effects of conscious regulation. But in theemotional experience indicators, the strategies’ start-up timing point has no effect on the differencesof the effects between the two types of emotion regulation: at the level of anticipatory and online,the effect of conscious emotion regulation is better than the effects of unconscious regulation.