The Influence of Emotion Regulation on Aggressive Behavior in the Face of Provocation

Provocation is associated with increased aggression across a variety of situations. However, emotion regulation decreases aggressive behavior after provocation. The current study tested the effect of manipulating emotion regulation strategies on aggressive behavior after being provoked, which has rarely been done in laboratory studies. College students were tested in five conditions: reappraisal, distraction, self-reflection, read-emotion-regulation-article, and read-movie-article. Provocation was induced using negative feedback on an essay and aggressive behavior was measured by the negative feedback participants provided. Although provocation produced feelings of anger in all conditions, emotion regulation strategies were not related to differences in aggressive behavior among conditions. However, the results suggest potential differences in the effectiveness of emotion regulation strategies for females.