Emotion, Vol 25(4), Jun 2025, 787-801; doi:10.1037/emo0001455
Cognitive reappraisal, changing the way one thinks about an emotional event, is one of the most effective and extensively studied emotion regulation strategies. Previous research has dissociated the generation of reappraisals (i.e., generating candidate alternative meanings of the event) from the implementation of reappraisals (i.e., selecting and elaborating on one reappraisal), finding that while generation slightly changes positive feelings, implementation yields the most substantial changes in positive emotion. Because they are two discrete processes, people might not always choose to implement a reappraisal they generated, and it is unclear what factors might influence implementation choice. We addressed this question in three preregistered studies. In Studies 1 (N = 52) and 2 (N = 58), we examined whether people’s choices to implement a generated reappraisal are influenced by (a) their positive emotion after generation and/or (b) the plausibility of that reappraisal (the degree to which a reappraisal reflects what might be actually happening and/or could potentially happen). The results suggest that people monitor their positive emotion when choosing to implement a positive reappraisal, while monitoring plausibility when choosing to implement a negative reappraisal. In Study 3 (N = 134), we found that people primarily monitored their positive emotion (vs. plausibility) both when given a motive to feel better and a motive to understand the stressor. Taken together, we propose that positive emotion after reappraisal generation and reappraisal plausibility are indices of making progress toward the goal of regulation. Our results suggest that these indices influence people’s choice to further implement the reappraisal. Our findings further our understanding of reappraisal generation and reappraisal implementation and reveal how and why people might choose to continue to regulate their emotions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)