Emotion Regulation Effects on Anxiety and Intuitive Decision Making

Intuitive decision making relies on a quick and subconscious associative process. Research has suggested that intuitive decision making can be impacted by anxiety, which in turn can be modulated by emotion regulation. Additionally, individuals with high trait anxiety are likely to be biased in their intuitive decision making, especially for negative stimuli, due to their negative biases. The present study investigated the relation between trait anxiety and intuitive decision making for negative and neutral stimuli and the effects of different emotion regulation strategies on the relation. A total of 196 undergraduate participants were randomly assigned to a cognitive reappraisal, rumination, or distraction condition following an anxiety induction task. After the emotion regulation manipulation, they completed a semantic coherence task to assess their intuitive decision making via accurate coherence detections in word triads. I hypothesized that the participants in the cognitive reappraisal condition would have better intuitive decision making compared to the participants in the rumination condition. I also hypothesized that the individuals with high levels of trait anxiety in the rumination condition would have better intuitive decision making for negative stimuli. Contrary to my expectations, neither trait anxiety levels nor emotion regulation strategies had an effect on intuitive decision making, which likely resulted from a failed emotion regulation manipulation. Unexpectedly, the participants performed better for negative stimuli compared to neutral stimuli in general, which might be due to the increased negative affect from the anxiety induction. Limitations and suggestions for future directions are provided in the discussion.