Influence of Emotion Regulation on Affective State: Moderation by Trait Cheerfulness

Emotion regulation research has exponentially grown in the past several years. However, to date, there is little information regarding its relation to cheerfulness, understood as a positive affective predisposition to sense of humor. The aim of the present study was to analyze the relationship between emotion regulation strategies and the state and trait dimensions of cheerfulness. More precisely, we wanted to explore whether trait cheerfulness moderates the effect of emotion regulation strategies on the participants' reported affective state after they are exposed to both amusing and sad stimuli. To achieve our goal, we randomly assigned 248 undergraduate psychology students (178 women) to one of the following conditions: expressive exaggeration, down-regulation reappraisal, expressive suppression, and control. They watched amusing, neutral, and sad clips, reporting their affective state several times throughout the study. In general, the results showed that the exaggeration group showed the largest affective changes, whereas the down-regulation reappraisal group showed the smallest affective changes with both amusing and sad stimuli. Critically, trait cheerfulness moderated the changes in the participants' affective state as a consequence of their being exposed to the amusing film clip in the exaggeration group. The effects were not affected by social desirability or reappraisal/suppression tendencies (as measured with the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire). The results are discussed highlighting the idea that the higher level of sensitivity to amusing affective contexts of high-trait-cheerfulness individuals could be due to a higher ability to exaggerate the behavior together with their more habitual and efficient use of reappraisal strategies.