Effortful Emotion Regulation Strategy Use and Cognition: An Individual Differences Approach

As we age, several cognitive abilities decline, yet the ability to regulate emotions remains stable (or improves) even when the emotion regulation strategy required is mentally effortful (i.e., requires cognitive resources for success). The primary aim of this dissertation was to examine how expressive suppression (i.e., the inhibition of emotional responses and behavior) impacts cognitive processing speed following a sadness induction procedure. Groups of younger (participants between 18 – 29 years of age) and older (participants over 60 years of age) adults completed three measures of processing speed, first following a no-regulation control condition. The control condition began with participants watching three film clips from BBC’s Planet Earth series. On a later day of testing, all participants completed the processing speed measures following an effortful emotion regulation experimental condition. The experimental condition began with participants watching three film clips meant to induce negative emotion, namely sadness. Prior to the experimental context of this study, all participants completed several individual difference measures of cognitive ability (e.g., crystallized intelligence, working memory, fluid reasoning, and rational thinking).It was predicted that younger adults would outperform older adults on processing speed tasks, and that effortful emotion regulation would generally impair subsequent cognitive ability (i.e., processing speed). Furthermore, it was predicted that younger adults would be impacted to a greater degree than older adults. Additionally, individual differences in cognitive ability were examined as potential moderators of the impact of effortful emotion regulation on processing speed. Main effects for both age group and emotion regulation, but no interaction effect, materialized in the project. First, younger adults outperformed older adults on the measures of processing speed, supporting the prediction made about this effect. However, regardless of age group, processing speed performance during expressive suppression was facilitated, not impaired. Additionally, these results persisted when statistically controlling for participants fluid reasoning and working memory abilities.This project supported previous findings regarding lifespan trends of cognitive development by demonstrating that, with age, processing speed performance and fluid reasoning ability declined, but crystallized intelligence ability increased. Following expressive suppression strategy use there was no cognitive impairment demonstrated regardless of age group. In fact, processing speed ability increased from the control to experimental test sessions implying that the degree of emotion regulation employed by participants led to facilitation. Additionally, the prediction that younger adults would require increased mental effort to use expressive suppression was not fully supported. However, the association did trend in the predicted direction. Furthermore, the requirement of increased mental effort during expressive suppression strategy use materialized for the entire sample of data and among older adult participants. These findings imply that effortful emotion regulation depletes cognitive resources regardless of the age of participants. In conclusion, self-regulation of negative emotions may function under a similar hyperbolic function like psychosocial stress. Additional lines of research with stronger methodological control are needed to determine these similarities. In conclusion, it is possible that small to moderate degrees of emotion regulation led to facilitation effects of concurrent cognitive ability due to increased focus and vigilance required during the regulation effort. However, larger degrees of regulation may lead to impairments expected by the predictions made in the study. This determination requires further testing under rigorous experimental control.