Useful and Affordable? Examining the Role of Costs in Motivated Emotion Regulation
Open Access
- Author:
- Hu, Danfei
- Graduate Program:
- Psychology
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- May 26, 2022
- Committee Members:
- Karen Winterich, Outside Unit & Field Member
Christopher Cameron, Major Field Member
Jose Soto, Major Field Member
Karen Gasper, Chair & Dissertation Advisor
Kristin Buss (she/her), Program Head/Chair - Keywords:
- costs
benefits
motivation
emotion regulation
negative emotion
anger - Abstract:
- Research suggests that people conduct a cost-benefit analysis to evaluate the utility of negative emotions and are motivated to experience negative feelings that have high utility for their goals. Yet, researchers interested in the utility of negative emotions, often only study the benefits of them and do not assess the costs, resulting in little being known about how both simultaneously operate. This project fills this gap by examining the hypothesis that the costs and benefits of negative emotions both alter people’s perceptions of their usefulness (i.e., whether an emotion is useful to one’s goal); while costs, more so than benefits, shape people’s affordability appraisal of the experience (i.e., whether one has enough resources to pay for the costs associated with an experience). Studies 1a and 1b examined the independent effects that costs exerted on individuals’ motivation to experience anger and focused on the usefulness mechanism. I independently manipulated the hedonic costs and instrumental benefits of anger, measured people’s perceived usefulness of anger for their goals, and assessed outcomes of motivated emotion regulation (e.g., emotional preferences and affect). As predicted, the costs and benefits associated with anger independently influenced subsequent emotion regulation through individuals’ perceived usefulness of anger. Studies 2a-2c conceptually replicated Studies 1a and 1b by manipulating another type of costs and examined both the usefulness and affordability of anger as the underlying mechanisms of motivated emotion regulation. Data reveal that both the social costs and the instrumental benefits of anger influenced perceived usefulness, whereas only the costs, but not benefits, of anger influenced perceived affordability. Both usefulness and affordability then shaped subsequent emotion regulation. Study 3 extended Studies 1 and 2 by examining motivated emotion regulation in daily life. I examined the different types of costs and benefits, as well as their intensity, that people perceived in response to real-life instances of motivated emotion regulation (e.g., daily regulation of negative emotions). Results indicated that people often reported multiple costs and/or benefits in their daily emotion regulation. And in support of the hypothesis about the independence of costs and benefits, the various types of costs and benefits that people spontaneously thought of in daily life were not highly correlated. Lastly, Study 3 partly replicated the findings in Studies 2a-2c at the within-, but not at the between-, person level. At the within-person level, both costs and benefits shaped the outcomes of motivated emotion regulation (i.e., affect) via usefulness. In contrast to Studies 2a-2c where costs but not benefits influenced affordability, in Study 3, both costs and benefits were significant determinants of affordability, which in turn, predicted motivated emotion regulation outcomes. In sum, it is clear that costs and benefits are independent motivational determinants of motivated emotion regulation. Costs are integral to understanding the variation in motivated emotion regulation: they not only shape whether an emotion is useful but also influence whether one thinks they can afford the experience.