Fig. 1

Emotion regulation strategy switching task, behavioral and peripheral physiological results. (A) Manipulation of Reappraisal Affordances: High Affordance pictures were expected to evoke Maintain-Reappraisal and Switch-to-Reappraisal decisions, and Low Affordance pictures Maintain-Distraction and Switch-to-Distraction decisions. (B) Reappraisal Affordance induced the expected switching between emotion regulation strategies (see A). (C) Switching from an instructed strategy was predicted by increased EMG corrugator peripheral physiological activity during initial strategy implementation, suggesting reduced strategy efficacy in downregulating emotional responses. Boxplots show significance of simple effects comprising a significant Instructed Strategy x Reappraisal Affordance interaction (see B) and the main effect of Decision on corrugator activity (see C). Squares inside the box indicate the group mean, individual participants’ results are shown as a scatterplot along the whisker. *** p < 0.001, ** p < 0.003, * p < 0.02. (D) Emotion Regulation Switching Task: Sample trial structure. Presentation duration of the pictures and instruction was fixed. Duration of the fixation cross varied between 1.25 and 1.75 s (M = 1.5 s). Inter-stimulus intervals (blank screen) varied between 0.3 and 0.7 s (M = 0.5 s). The red box outline marks the decision trial phase for which the EEG results are reported (see Fig. 2).