Another Differentiated Look at Emotions: A Replication Study on Associations Between Gaze Behavior During the...

People with high emotional granularity (EG; the capacity to differentiate among discrete emotional states) tend to employ more effective emotion regulation strategies during negative affective states. Recent eye-tracking evidence suggests that EG is associated with the frequency of revisits to negative emotional stimuli. The current study aimed to replicate this finding, however, using more complex, dynamic distractors to test whether avoidance occurs when competing content is more engaging and if the link between EG and revisits could be replicated. Participants (n = 160) viewed emotional videos and subsequently described their affect. The affect-describing adjectives were used to calculate a performance-based EG index. Higher performance-based EG correlated with longer total fixation duration on affective videos. Higher self-reported EG was associated with a lower number of gaze revisits of affective videos. The present replication study highlights the importance of considering the complexity of the visual environment when interpreting attentional indicators of emotion regulation. In the more complex visual environment, performance-based EG may be linked to sustained engagement with emotional content while higher self-reported EG may reduce the subjective need to revisit affect elicitors.