Efficiency of Illusory Choice Used as a Variant of Situation Selection for Regulating Emotions: Reduction of Positive Experience But Preservation of Physiological Downregulation

Abstract

Situation selection is an emotion regulation strategy consisting in choosing a future emotional situation. Past research showed that Situation selection triggers a decrease in negative experience, exocrine reactions and respiratory activity, while maintaining stable positive experience. In this study, we wanted to replicate these observations and test emotional responses that follow an Illusory choice, i.e., when the chosen situation is not available and replaced by another. Sixty-eight participants watched emotional pictures, either in a condition in which the images were imposed, or in a condition in which they could perform a choice. In these latter trials, participants saw either the chosen option (Situation selection) or the non-selected option (Illusory choice). Continuous recordings of experience and physiological arousal showed that, unlike Situation selection, Illusory choice decreased positive experience but not negative experience. Strikingly, however, we showed that having the choice decreased skin conductance and respiratory arousal, regardless of whether the choice was respected or not. These results have important implications regarding emotion regulation through Situation selection, since having the choice about the upcoming emotional situation, no matter if we really end up in this situation, gives a sense of control that may be sufficient to alleviate physiological responses to stressors.

The Interplay Between Affective Processing and Sense of Agency During Action Regulation: A Review

“…Several studies tested if sense of agency influences participants' self-reported emotional states. Most experiments found that having a degree of choice over one's actions and/or a feeling of control over ensuing action effects led to more positive or less negative affect (Abelson et al, 2008 ; Thuillard and Dan-Glauser, 2017 , 2020 ; Stolz et al, 2020 ; Li et al, 2021 ). Moreover, participants prefer tasks which allow them to make choices compared to tasks where they cannot choose between different options, even when their own choices are not more likely to result in better outcomes (Leotti and Delgado, 2011 , 2014 ; Fujiwara et al, 2013 ; Cockburn et al, 2014 ; Mistry and Liljeholm, 2016 ; Bobadilla-Suarez et al, 2017 ; Wang and Delgado, 2019 ).…”