What factors influence how people generate ideas for regulating their emotions?: Emotion regulation as a divergent-thinking process

Emotion regulation (ER) is a multi-faceted process, though its generative component––wherein one ideates situation-specific regulatory options (“techniques”)––is poorly understood. We hypothesized that ER generation involves divergent-thinking processes, and that generation difficulties characterize emotional dysregulation. We developed a novel task––ERGen––in which online adult participants (N = 143) generated techniques to regulate their emotional response to negative scenarios. Human raters and a generative pre-trained transformer (GPT-4o) coded each technique (n = 7854) into one of 14 regulatory strategies, and we regressed both broader strategy and raw technique counts against individual creativity and depression symptom levels. Results revealed that individuals higher in creativity showed more prolific technique generation across many strategies, whereas more depressed individuals showed altered generation within specific strategies, and reduced deviation from habitual ER tendencies. These findings highlight an untapped research sphere that can motivate new endeavors in ER, including creativity interventions in affective disorders.