Performance and Belief-Based Emotion Regulation Capacity and Tendency: Mapping Links With Cognitive Flexibility and Perceived Stress

Cognitive reappraisal is among the most effective and well-studied emotion regulation strategies humans have at their disposal. Here, in 250 healthy adults across 2 preregistered studies, we examined whether reappraisal capacity (the ability to reappraise) and tendency (the propensity to reappraise) differentially relate to perceived stress. We also investigated whether cognitive flexibility, a skill thought to support reappraisal, accounted for associations between reappraisal capacity and tendency and perceived stress but found no evidence for this hypothesis. Both Studies 1 and 2 robustly showed that reappraisal tendency was associated with perceived stress, whereas a significant relationship between reappraisal capacity and perceived stress was only observed in Study 2. Further, Study 2 suggested that self-reported beliefs about one's emotion regulation capacity and tendency were predictive of wellbeing, whereas no such associations were observed with performance-based assessments of capacity and tendency. These data suggest that self-reported perceptions of reappraisal skills may be more predictive of wellbeing than actual reappraisal skills.