The Impact Of Emotion,Emotion Regulation Strategies And Regulatory Focus On Risky Decision Making

The research topic of Risky Decision Making has gotten increasing concerns from some sports psychologists.It is emphasized that the results of athletes in a competition tend to be determined by their risk-taking behavior at critical moments.Similarly,as individuals' risk decision making has been proved to be associated with emotion,most of researchers have done further studies about emotion,followed by paying more attention to the aspect of emotion regulation strategies.However,in these existing studies,the influences of emotion and emotion regulation strategies on athletes' risk-taking behaviors have rarely been involved.Furthermore,regulatory focus has been regarded as a kind of special trend and strategy in the process of individual goal pursuit.It also has significant influence on individuals' behaviors.Studies have stated the individual differences among different behavioral tasks.Nevertheless,there is still a lack of research on physiological reaction in the process of risky tasks.As a result,it could be systematically considered that the influence of emotion,emotion regulation strategies and individual characteristics regulatory focus on athletes' risk-taking behaviors and physiological reaction collectively and severally.This research has selected university student athletes as participants and used the combination of questionnaire and experiment to conduct.In addition,this research consists of three studies,which have systematically and comprehensively analyzed the influence of emotion,emotion regulation strategies on the risk-taking behaviors and physiological of athletes who have different regulatory focus.This study consists of three parts: Pre-research aimed to test the applicability of the Regulatory Focus Questionnaire;Study 1 aimed to explore the impact of emotion,emotion regulation strategies and regulatory focus on the athlete's risky decision making;Study 2 aimed to explore the impact of emotion,emotion regulationstrategies and regulatory focus on physiological responses of athlete's risky decision making.Pre-research examine the applicability test of the Regulatory Focus Questionnaire in the athletes' group.The study selected 402 college athlete students,using the confirmatory factor analysis and the reliability analysis to test the applicability of the Regulatory Focus Questionnaire.The results show that this questionnaire has good reliability and validity,it can be used to measure the regulatory focus of athletes.In the study 1,96 university athletes were selected to investigate the impact of emotion,emotion regulation strategies and regulatory focus on athletes' risk decision-making.The results showed as follow:(1)Regulatory focus affects athletes' risk decision-making,and the promotion focus athletes are more tendency to take risk than those prevention focus;(2)Emotion affects athletes' risk decision-making,and athletes in state of happy are more likely to take risk than those in negative emotion;(3)Emotion regulation strategies affect athletes' risky decision-making,and athletes adopted cognitive reappraisal strategy have more tendency to seek risk than those used inhibition strategy;(4)Emotion regulation strategies affect the influence of emotion,regulatory focus on athletes' risk-making: when promotion focus athletes used cognitive reappraisal strategy,athletes in state of happy tend to take risk than those in negative emotion;when prevention focus athletes used inhibition strategy,athletes in state of happy tend to be more risk-seeking behavior than those in angry emotion;when prevention focus athletes in negative emotion,those used cognitive reappraisal strategy have more tendency to take risk than those used inhibition strategy.Study 2 selected 96 university athletes to investigate the effects of emotion,emotion regulation strategies and regulatory focus on athletes' physiological response of risk decision-making.The result showed as follow:(1)Emotion affects the athlete's physiological response,and the heart rate and heart rate variability are much higher than those in peace;(2)There is an interaction effect between the regulatory focus and emotion regulation strategies.Promotion focus athletes who used cognitive reappraisal strategy could reduce the athlete's heart rate variability better than those using inhibition strategy.Prevention focus athletes who used inhibition strategy could reduce the athlete's heart rate variability better than those using cognitive reappraisal strategy;(3)When they did risky decision making,Athletes' heart rate and heart rate variability were much higher than those in peace.The conclusions of this study showed as follow:(1)The applicability of Regulatory Focus Questionnaire in the athlete population is good;(2)Regulatory focus affects athletes' risky decision making.Promotion focus athletes prefer to seek risk than prevention focus athletes;(3)Emotion affects athletes' risky decision making.Athletes in positive emotion have more tendency to take risk than those in negative emotion;(4)emotion regulation strategies affect athletes' risky decision making.Athletes who used cognitive reappraisal strategy are more likely to take risk than those using inhibition strategy;(5)Athletes' risky decision making and their physiological responses are influenced by the emotion,emotion regulation strategies and regulatory focus.Theremay be regulatory fit effect between the regulatory focus and emotion regulation strategies during the emotion regulation.