Effects of ambivalence and intensity on emotion regulation choice with negative and positive images

Previous research has found that people are more likely to choose to reappraise ambivalent images compared to non-ambivalent negative images. The purpose of this study was to replicate Horner et al. (2023) with a novel set of negative images (Experiment 1) and determine if the findings generalize to positive images (Experiments 2–3). We hypothesized that people are more likely to choose reappraisal for ambivalent compared to non-ambivalent images. Using an emotion regulation choice paradigm in which people downregulated negative emotion (Experiment 1), we found that people were more likely to choose to reappraise ambivalent images compared to non-ambivalent images, with an interaction showing that the effect was driven by an greater likelihood to reappraise high intensity ambivalent images compared to high intensity non-ambivalent images, with minimal differences between low intensity ambivalent and non-ambivalent images. In Experiments 2–3, participants did an emotion regulation choice paradigm where they downregulated positive emotion. We found that participants were more likely to reappraise high intensity positive images compared to low intensity positive images in Experiment 2, and a similar marginal effect in Experiment 3, with no effect of ambivalence. The effect of ambivalent information on emotion regulation choice may only be significant in negative contexts.