The Moderating Role of Inhibition on Irrelevant Emotional Information in the Relation of Cognitive Reappraisal and Affect Balance: Evidence from a Negative Affective Priming Task

This study tested the role of inhibitory control as a moderator in the relationship between cognitive reappraisal and affect balance. We employed moderation analyses with data collected from 201 participants (mean age = 22.07 years, 76.1% female). We measured their affect balance in the last 4 weeks (with the Scale of Positive and Negative Experience [SPANE]), their habitual use of cognitive reappraisal (ERQ Scale), and their performance in inhibiting irrelevant positive and negative information by means of an online negative affective priming task. Results indicated that cognitive reappraisal was a significant and positive predictor for affect balance. As predicted, inhibition of irrelevant positive and negative stimuli significantly moderated the relationship between cognitive reappraisal and affect balance. Specifically, moderate to weak inhibition of irrelevant positive stimuli and moderate to strong inhibition of irrelevant negative stimuli were found to strengthen this relationship. Thus, our findings suggest that individuals can strengthen the positive impact of cognitive reappraisal on affect balance by strongly inhibiting irrelevant negative stimuli while allowing irrelevant positive stimuli to be processed in the working memory.