Pre-planned reappraisal via implementation intention down-regulates emotional experiences of youth with self-reported...

Cognitive reappraisal is an emotion-regulation strategy that involves altering the emotional impact of a situation by changing its appraisal. However, individuals with depressive symptoms often struggle to deploy momentary cognitive reappraisal during emotional encounters due to impaired cognitive control. Pre-planned reappraisal formed through implementation intentions, that is, a strategy rehearsed in advance to activate automatically upon emotional triggers, may offer a more efficient alternative.

This study examined whether pre-planned cognitive reappraisal via implementation intentions more effectively reduces negative emotional experience in youth with depressive symptoms than momentary reappraisal, and whether these effects persist after short-term re-exposure.

This randomised, single-blind and three-arm experiment was conducted from 10 December 2021 to 19 December 2021 at Southwest University in China. Following screening with the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II), 64 undergraduate students with depressive symptoms (score ≥ 20) and 64 without depressive symptoms (score ≤ 10) were enrolled. Participants were randomly allocated to one of three experimental conditions: passive watching of emotional stimuli, momentary reappraisal (reinterpreting the meaning of a sad face upon presentation) or pre-planned reappraisal (applying a pre-trained reappraisal framework before stimulus presentation). The formal experiment included an emotion elicitation and regulation task, a 20-min interval during which participants completed questionnaires and a re-exposure phase in which all groups passively viewed novel sad faces. Subjective emotional experiences were measured using the nine-point self-assessment manikin (SAM).

Pre-planned reappraisal produced significantly less negative valence and lower arousal ratings for sad faces than passive watching in both participants with and without depressive symptoms. Momentary reappraisal only reduced negative emotional ratings in participants without depressive symptoms, but not those with depressive symptoms. During re-exposure, only prior pre-planned reappraisal yielded sustained reductions in negative emotional ratings. Participants with depressive symptoms also reported greater perceived benefit from pre-planned than from momentary reappraisal.

Compared with momentary reappraisal, pre-planned cognitive reappraisal via implementation intentions produced stronger and more short-term sustained effects among youth with depressive symptoms, supporting its potential use in low-cost self-regulation interventions and clinical cognitive therapies.