The Impacts Of Habitual Emotional Regulation Strategies On Risk Decision-making

In recent years, the study of the relationship between emotion regulation and cognitive is an important cutting-edge hot in the field of emotional and cognitive research, emotion regulation has an important impact on the higher cognitive activities of memory, reasoning, decision-making and so on. However, the current research on the relationship between emotion regulation strategies and high-level cognitive activities, especially the influence on the decision-making are rarely involved. In the only some studies, they are mainly on the emotion regulation strategies manipulated by experimental guidance. However, according to the theoretical views of the American psychologist Gross, the emotion process is the process of emotion regulation, so people more adopt their own unique habitual emotion regulation strategies to adjust their emotions in everyday life naturally, then in the study of emotion and emotion regulation strategies on the cognitive activity, individual habitual emotion regulation strategy is a worth-considering variable. Therefore, this study considering the risk decision-making as an important cognitive activity, using laboratory research and questionnaire survey method, systematically explores the subjective emotional experience and the impacts of habitual emotion regulation strategies on the risk decision-making under the positive and negative emotional context through the before and after three research.This study contains three sub-studies:Study1revised Gross’s emotion regulation questionnaire, and determined the Chinese version of the emotion regulation questionnaire to be used for selecting subjects in study2and3. The results showed that the revised emotion regulation questionnaire retained all items of the original questionnaire, was also divided into two dimensions of cognitive reappraisal and expression suppression. It had good reliability and validity, and could apply to Chinese college students.Study2adopted laboratory research and questionnaire survey method, used pictures to evoke different emotions to examine habitual emotion regulation strategies on the risk decision-making, and to lay a certain foundation for study3. The results indicated that the emotional material induced the different nature of the emotions successfully; there existed the interaction of emotion and habitual emotion regulation strategies on the risk decision-making, that is under the positive emotional condition, the individuals accustomed to cognitive reappraisal were more inclined to risk seeking and experienced more positive emotion than the individuals accustomed to expression suppression, and under the negative emotional condition, the individuals accustomed to expression suppression were more inclined to risk seeking and experienced more positive emotion than the individuals accustomed to cognitive reappraisal.Study3on the basis of study2, used experimental instructions to control the subjects’emotion regulation strategies, and further investigated the impact of the habitual emotion regulation strategies on the risk decision-making. The results showed that habitual emotion regulation strategies were no significant main effect on the risk decision-making; the interaction of emotion and instructions on risk decision-making was significant, that is in the positive emotional condition, the subjects under the instruction of cognitive reappraisal were more inclined to risk seeking and experienced more positive emotion than the subjects under the instruction of expression suppression, and in the negative emotional condition, the subjects under the instruction of expression suppression were more inclined to risk seeking and experienced more positive emotion than the subjects under the instruction of cognitive reappraisal.In summary, this study was mainly to explore the differences in risk decision-making between individuals accustomed to cognitive reappraisal and individuals accustomed to expression suppression in different emotional context, and examined individuals whether to change their habitual emotion regulation strategies through external intervention to make more effective decision. The innovation of this study is the exploration of habutial emotion regulation strategies on the risk decision-making in a lab environment, and also examined the two variables of the instant emotion regulation strategies and habitual emotion regulation strategies. Because habitual emotion regulation strategies are often reflected in daily life, future studies should increase the ecological validity of the research in the area, are more operated in the real scenario and so on.