Executive control attenuates emotional effects—For high reappraisers only?

Irrelevant emotional information influences adaptive behavior. Previous results demonstrated that executive control may help reduce such influence. The current research studied the relationship between the tendency to use emotion regulation strategies (e.g., reappraisal and suppression) and the ability of executive control to reduce emotional interference. Our results demonstrate that negative stimuli disrupt performance in congruent flanker trials, regardless of individual tendencies to use reappraisal or suppression. In contrast, negative stimuli did not disrupt performance in incongruent trials in people who report frequent use of reappraisal. This pattern appeared both when a negative stimulus appeared before and after the flanker target and was not modulated by suppression level. We suggest that people who tend to use reappraisal have improved ability of executive control to reduce emotional effects.