The Influence Of Emotion Regulation Strategies On College Students’ Convergent Creativity And Its Neural Mechanism

Emotion regulation can help college students reduce risks and pressures during their growth,as well as a key factor to promote their creative performance.Emotion regulation affects attention,long-term memory,working memory,reasoning and many other cognitive activities,and may also affect convergent creativity.However,in the field of higher education psychology,previous studies have not paid enough attention to this topic,and the impact of emotion regulation on convergent creativity still needs to be explored.This study is the first research that investigated the influence of different emotion regulation strategies on convergent creativity,and further revealed the neural mechanism.This paper consists of three studies,including two ERP experiments,a compilation of an emotional system and four behavioral experiments.In study 1,two ERP experiments were conducted to explore the neural mechanism of the influence of classical emotion regulation strategies(cognitive reappraisal and expression suppression)on convergent creativity when emotional pictures initiate positive emotions(sub-study 1)and negative emotions(sub-study 2),respectively.Study 2 contains three sub-studies.For college students,there are some problems with priming emotions with emotional pictures,such as low arousal and ecological validity.Therefore,in study 2,the emotional situation sentence system(ESSS)was first compiled based on previous studies.Then,by comparing the ESSS with classical emotional picture system,their respective advantages were excavated from the aspects of the valence,arousal and culture(sub-study 4).Subsequently,a creative cognitive reappraisal sentence system was developed and evaluated.Finally,the influence of different cognitive reappraisal methods(self-generated creative cognitive reappraisal and given creative cognitive reappraisal)on convergent creativity was explored(sub-study 5).Study 3 included two behavioral experiments.The influence of different classical emotion regulation strategies(cognitive reappraisal and expression suppression)(sub-study 6)and different cognitive reappraisal strategies(traditional cognitive reappraisal and creative cognitive reappraisal)(sub-study 7)on convergent creativity was explored in depth under different cognitive loads.This study systematically explored the influence of emotion regulation strategy on college students’ convergent creativity and its neural mechanism.The emotional priming materials are constructive,ranging from emotional face pictures to self-compiled ESSS.Furthermore,the use of emotion regulation strategies ranged from classical emotional regulation strategies(cognitive reappraisal and expression suppression)to creative cognitive reappraisal strategies(self-generated creative cognitive reappraisal and given creative cognitive reappraisal)advanced to the effects of different cognitive load tasks on convergent creativity.The main results are as follows:(1)The results of sub-study 1 showed that the use of cognitive reappraisal to regulate positive emotion can promote convergent creativity.In the early stage(N1),cognitive reappraisal can improve the individuals’ sensitivity to convergent creativity problem.In the late stage(P350-2000),cognitive reappraisal can help the individuals to reduce the consumption of attention resources,especially the promotion effect of P350-650 is the most obvious.(2)The results of sub-study 2 showed that the use of cognitive reappraisal to regulate negative emotions impeded the performance of convergent creativity,while maintaining negative emotions(anger)promoted convergent creativity.When participants solved convergent creativity tasks after using cognitive reappraisal to regulate negative emotions,greater N1,P2 and P350-2000 were induced,that is,the regulation of negative emotions can make individuals pay more attention to the convergent creativity task,which leads to the consumption of more time in answering the question,and reduces the efficiency of answering the question.(3)In the sub-studies 1,2 and 6,cognitive reappraisal and expression suppression were used to regulate the emotion of participants stimulated by pictures and emotional situation sentences.The subjective score of the participants confirmed that cognitive reappraisal was better than expression suppression.From the perspective of ERP,sub-studies 1 and 2 showed that whether positive or negative emotions were regulated.Compared with the control group,both cognitive reappraisal and expression suppression can reduce LPP,but the effect of cognitive reappraisal was more significant,which confirms that emotion regulation can reduce individuals’ attention to emotional stimuli and emotional arousal.(4)The ESSS compiled by sub-study 3 is an emotional system that can meet the needs of emotional research,standardized,ecological validity and closely related to college students’ life.In sub-study 4,their respective advantages were found by comparing the emotional situation sentences and emotional pictures:1.ESSS had better arousal and valence,and made up for the lack of anxiety in emotional picture system;2.Individuals have shorter reaction time to emotional pictures;3.Pictures are more applicable and cross-cultural.(5)Sub-study 5 focuses on the influence of different cognitive reappraisal strategy on convergent creativity.The results show that both self-generated creative cognitive reappraisal and given creative cognitive reappraisal are effective strategies to regulate negative emotions,and adopting the given creative reappraisal strategy to regulate emotions was beneficial to individuals’ performance in the convergent creativity task.(6)Sub-study 6 and 7 explored the influence of emotion regulation on convergent creativity under different cognitive loads.Overall,the performance of individual convergent creativity under low cognitive load is better than that under high cognitive load.Sub-study 6 found that under high cognitive load,the use of cognitive reappraisal to regulate emotions promoted the performance of convergent creativity,while under low cognitive load,the use of expression suppression promoted the performance of convergent creativity.In the sub-study 7,it was found that creative cognitive reappraisal under high cognitive load impeded the convergent creativity performance of college students,while under low cognitive load,it was the opposite.In conclusion,adjusting negative emotions hinders convergent creativity,but using cognitive reappraisal to adjust positive emotions can promote convergent creativity.In addition,this study developed a research tool suitable for initiating emotions of college students,and further explored the regulation strategies of creative cognitive reappraisal and the effects of different cognitive loads on convergent creativity tasks,which provided a theoretical basis for future research.Finally,all the seven studies involved in this study take college students as the participant,and the results of the study have implications for the growth of college students,higher education research and the curriculum design of colleges and universities.