The Influence Of Emotion Regulation Strategies On Intertemporal Decision-Making Of Heroin Abstainers

Drug addiction and relapse are often the choice between instant enjoyment and long-term health.This is an inter-temporal decision-making.Heroin abstinence exhibit dysfunction of “immediate income priority” in inter-temporal decision-making and are affected by multiple motivational factors including emotions.The study found that emotions play a key role in influencing decision-making preferences of drug addicts.The Emotion Regulation Strategy of heroin abstinence patients have long-lasting changes,and can’t prevent the behavior of addicted individuals seeking drugs automatically.It is unclear whether the Emotion Regulation Strategy will regulate the inter-temporal decision-making tasks of heroin abstinence.Based on this,the study used the delayed discount task to explore the impact of negative emotions on the inter-temporal decision-making of heroin abstinence.On the basis of Study 1,Study 2 added the emotional regulation strategy to explore the impact of emotional regulation strategies on the inter-temporal decision-making tasks of heroin abstinence.In the first study,31 heroin abstinents and 31 normal control groups were included in the study,and the performance of the two groups in the delayed discount task under negative emotion was examined.The results showed that under the negative emotion and neutral emotion,the delayed discount performance of heroin abstinence patients were significantly worse than the normal control group;the AUC values of the two groups under the negative emotion were significantly lower than the AUC under neutral emotion value.The results showed that heroin abstinence was more impulsive,while negative emotion had a significant impact on delayed discount tasks.In the second study,31 heroin abstinence patients and 33 normal control groups were enrolled in the study.The performance of the two groups under the negative emotions,cognitive reappraisal,expression suppression,and no strategy under delayed conditions were investigated.The results showed that regardless of the Emotion Regulation conditions,the delayed discount performance of heroinwithdrawal patients was significantly worse than the normal control group;the performance of the two groups under cognitive reappraisal was significantly better than the expression suppression and no strategy conditions.It were indicated that cognitive reappraisal regulates the relationship between individual negative emotions and delayed discounts.In summary,this study showed that(1)the inter-temporal decision-making ability in heroin abstainers had a high delay discount rate.(2)Negative emotions can increase an individual’s delay discount rate.(3)Cognitive reassessment strategies can interfere with the impact of negative emotions on inter-temporal decision-making.