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Updated: Jan 21, 2026

The Emotional Stroop Task: Assessing Cognitive Performance under Exposure to Emotional Content
Published on: June 29, 2016
The paradoxical relationship between emotion regulation and gambling-related cognitive biases
Cristian M Ruiz de Lara1, Juan F Navas1, José C Perales1
1Mind, Brain and Behavior Research Center (CIMCYC), University of Granada, Granada, Spain.
Background:
Gambling behavior presents substantial individual variability regarding its severity, manifestations, and psychological correlates. Specifically, differences in emotion regulation, impulsivity, and cognitive distortions have been identified as crucial to describe individual profiles with implications for the prevention, prognosis, and treatment of gambling disorder (GD).
Aims And Method:
The aim of the present study was to investigate the associations of gambling-related cognitions (measured according to the GRCS model) with impulsivity (UPPS-P model) and emotion regulation (CERQ model), in a sample of 246 gamblers with different levels of gambling involvement, using mixed-effects modelling to isolate theoretically relevant associations while controlling for the potentially confounding effects of sociodemographic and clinical covariates.
Results:
Affective/motivational dimensions of UPPS-P impulsivity positive urgency and sensation seeking, on the one hand, and CERQ emotion regulation strategies reappraisal, rumination and blaming others, on the other, independently and significantly predicted distorted gambling-related cognitions.
Conclusions:
These results (a) reinforce the ones of previous studies stressing the relevance of emotional and motivational processes in the emergence of gambling-related cognitive distortions; and (b) replicate the seemingly paradoxical finding that gamblers use emotion regulation strategies customarily considered as adaptive (i.e. reappraisal) to strengthen and justify their biased beliefs about gambling outcomes and controllability.
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