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The influence of reward motivation on emotion regulation

LI Han-Xiao, LONG Quan-Shan, CHEN An-Tao^*, LI Qing

Key Laboratory of Cognition and Personality of Ministry of Education, Faculty of Psychology, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China

Abstract

The influence of reward on behavior is one of the hottest research subjects in psychological research. Reward-induced motivation promotes the performance of the participants. In the field of emotional processing, the reward can influence the individual’s processing of emotional information, but previous studies have not directly discussed the effect of reward on emotional regulation. The present study focused on whether emotional regulation ability would be improved under the reward condition. Experiment 1 and 2 investigated the effect of reward on negative emotional down-regulation and positive emotional up-regulation respectively. In experiment 1, monetary reward stimulation was introduced on the basis of the classic emotion regulation paradigm, and the subjects were asked to regulate their negative emotion under the condition of reward or non-reward, and evaluate their current affective state subsequently. Similar to experiment 1, experiment 2 required subjects to up-regulate positive emotions under the condition of reward or non-reward. The results of experiment 1 showed that under the reward condition, the negative emotional regulation effect was significantly higher than that under the non-reward condition (P < 0.05). Experiment 2 also showed that compared to non-reward condition, the positive emotion regulation effect was significantly increased under the reward condition (P < 0.05). These results suggested that compared to non-reward condition, participants can regulate their emotion better under the condition of the reward. It is worth noting that the results of Experiment 1 and 2 may be caused by the incentive motivation induced by monetary stimulus, or the positive emotion caused by positive value of money information. Therefore, we carried out experiment 3 and 4 to explore whether the positive emotions induced by money itself can influence the emotional regulation of individuals. In experiment 3, the money pictures were used to induce the positive emotions of subjects, and the subjects were asked to regulate their negative emotion after the presence of money pictures or non-monetary picture, and evaluate their current affective state subsequently. Similarly, experiment 4 required subjects to regulate their positive emotion after the presence of money pictures. The results of experiment 3 and 4 showed that there was no significant difference in the subjects’ scores of emotional pleasantness after the presence of money pictures or non-monetary picture  (P < 0.05). The results of experiment 3 and 4 excluded the possibility that the positive emotions induced by simple money stimulus pictures could improve individual’s emotional regulation ability. To sum up, the improvement of individual’s emotional regulation ability was indeed driven by reward motivation in this study, that is, the motivation induced by reward can effectively promote individual’s emotional regulation ability.

Key words: reward motivation; emotion regulation; cognitive reappraisal; negative emotion; positive emotion

Received: 2018-03-30　　Accepted: 2018-10-15

Corresponding author: 陈安涛　　E-mail: xscat@swu.edu.cn

DOI: 10.13294/j.aps.2019.0044

Citing This Article：

LI Han-Xiao, LONG Quan-Shan, CHEN An-Tao, LI Qing. The influence of reward motivation on emotion regulation. Acta Physiol Sin 2019; 71 (4): 562-574 (in Chinese with English abstract).