Goal-directed attentional deployment to emotional faces and individual differences in emotional regulation

This study investigated whether goal-directed attentional deployment to emotional faces serves as an effective mechanism for emotion regulation and whether individual differences in this ability predicts more effective emotion regulation. Undergraduate participants (N = 109) performed the dot-probe task under stress and were given either a goal to focus their attention on happy faces and avoid angry faces or no attentional goal. Participants given this goal reported nearly three times less frustration in reaction to a stressful anagram task compared to those not given this goal. In addition, those with a greater ability to focus on happy faces and avoid angry faces persisted significantly longer on a stressful anagram task. Trait anxiety did not moderate these effects. These findings have important implications for theories of emotion regulation and anxiety-related attentional biases. Training goal-directed attentional deployment holds considerable promise for future research on developing effective emotion regulation techniques.