The Role of Trait Reappraisal in Response to Emotional Ambiguity: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Individuals exhibit a systematic valence bias-a specific form of interpretation bias-in response to emotional ambiguity. Accumulating evidence suggests most people initially respond to emotional ambiguity negatively and differ only in subsequent responses. We hypothesized that trait-level cognitive...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Emotion (Washington, D.C.) D.C.), 2024-06, Vol.24 (4), p.935-946
Main Authors: Harp, Nicholas R., Gross, James J., Uusberg, Andero, Neta, Maital
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Affective Valence
Cognitive Appraisal
Emotional Regulation
Emotional Regulation - physiology
Emotions - physiology
Human
Humans
Individual Differences
Individuality
Interpretive Bias
Personality - physiology
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Summary:Individuals exhibit a systematic valence bias-a specific form of interpretation bias-in response to emotional ambiguity. Accumulating evidence suggests most people initially respond to emotional ambiguity negatively and differ only in subsequent responses. We hypothesized that trait-level cognitive reappraisal-an emotion regulation strategy involving the reinterpretation of affective meaning of stimuli-might explain individual differences in valence bias. To answer this question, we conducted a random-effects meta-analysis of 14 effect sizes from 13 prior studies (n = 2,086), identified via Google Scholar searches. We excluded studies (a) in languages other than English, (b) from non-peer-reviewed sources, or (c) nonempirical sources. We included studies with (a) the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire, (b) a putative measure of valence bias prior to any study-specific manipulations, and (c) adult human participants (i.e., 17+). Supporting our prediction, we found individuals with higher trait reappraisal exhibited a less negative bias (r = −.18, z = −4.04, p < .001), whereas there was a smaller, opposite effect for trait expressive suppression (r = .10, z = 2.14, p = .03). The effects did, however, vary across tasks with stronger effects observed among studies using the scrambled sentences task compared to the valence bias task. Although trait reappraisal accounted for only a small amount of variance, reappraisal may be one mechanism contributing to variability in response to ambiguity.
ISSN:1528-3542
1931-1516
1931-1516
DOI:10.1037/emo0001316