Effects of acute stress on emotion regulation flexibility: The moderating role of working memory capacity

• Applicant: Dr. Katja Langer
• Subject Area: Biological Psychology and Cognitive Neuroscience
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 551671001

The experience of stress and the need to regulate emotions is ubiquitous in everyday life. Regulatory skills are especially needed under stress to enable successful adaptation to and recovery from the stressor. A growing body of work has demonstrated that deficits in emotion regulation (ER) represent a transdiagnostic risk factor for psychopathology. Therefore, experimental research on stress effects on ER is crucial to identify factors that may explain interindividual differences in the vulnerability to mental disorders. When a situation is perceived as potentially threatening, complex physiological cascades ultimately lead to the secretion of catecholamines (e.g., epinephrine and norepinephrine) and glucocorticoids (e.g., cortisol) from the adrenal gland providing helpful coping resources (e.g., energy) to the organism. Stress hormones like cortisol particularly act on prefrontal and limbic structures that are also essential for ER processes indicating an interrelated relationship. In fact, in my previous research, I have shown that acute stress can favor cognitive ER performance and adaptive strategy choice behavior depending on the intensity of the emotional stimulus. However, ER performances not only depend on the ability to flexibly choose between different regulatory strategies but also to switch between them, which is subsumed under the term ER flexibility. To date, however, there are no experimental data on the effects of stress on the ability to switch from one strategy to another (ER strategy switch) or on the interaction between choice and switching (ER flexibility). In addition, there is ample evidence that the effects of stress on ER flexibility depend on working memory (WM) capacity, since both functions are based on the fronto-parietal executive control network. Yet, the role of WM for stress effects on ER has never been tested before. The present project aims to investigate whether and how stress affects the ability to flexibly choose and switch between ER strategies in men and women and how these effects shape ER performances. In doing so, the moderating role of WM capacity will be explored for the first time. The project comprises three studies in each of which 100 subjects (50 women) will be recruited to investigate the effects of acute stress on ER strategy choice (Study I), switching between ER strategies (Study II), and ER flexibility (Study III) and its association with stress-related biomarkers (cortisol and alpha-amylase) in an experimental laboratory study design. Overall, the present project will thus provide new insights into the effects of stress on ER flexibility and its consequences for regulatory performances. Beyond, these studies will be the first that shed light on the moderating role of cognitive control functioning for stress effects on ER processes.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants