Summary
We aim to develop a paradigm to determine individual subjective values of emotion regulation strategies to further research on individual differences in strategy choice.
Background
Research on the concept of emotion regulation (ER) choice has examined the question of which criteria people use to decide for or against a certain strategy. Often, the focus was on the chosen strategy but not on the rejected one, so it is unknown what the individual subjective values (SVs) of all strategies look like.
Aims
We would like to present a new method to determine individual SVs of ER strategies, and investigate how these SVs can be predicted.
Planned Methods
In an ER paradigm, participants will use the strategies distraction, distancing, and suppression while inspecting negative pictures. Subjective arousal, effort ratings, and electromyography measures will be collected. In the next part, SVs will be estimated using a discounting procedure that compares all strategies and offers monetary amounts. The amounts are adjusted until the indifference point is found. In the last part, participants can decide, which strategy they want to use again.
Using a multilevel modeling approach, it will be investigated whether individual SVs can be explained by subjective arousal, subjective effort or EMG activity. Further it will be investigated whether SVs are associated with strategy choice in the last block or personality traits.
Conclusions
We want to propose a new approach on how to determine individual SVs of ER strategies. It may make a great contribution to research on ER variability and repertoire.