Individual differences in inhibitory control are not related to emotion regulation

Although cognitive control and emotional control have been proposed to rely on similar processes, their specific relationship is not well understood. Given that reappraisal to down-regulate negative emotions requires inhibiting or limiting the expression of a prepotent appraisal of a situation in favor of selecting an alternative appraisal, inhibitory control seems to be a particularly relevant process. However, inconsistent findings on the relationship between inhibitory control and reappraisal ability have been reported, likely because of the application of single task measures in relatively small samples. Therefore, this study examined the relationship between both control processes using a powerful within-subject design in a large sample (N = 190) and by applying a battery of six commonly used inhibitory control tasks. Emotion regulation was measured comprehensively by self-reported habitual use of reappraisal and suppression strategies, by valence and arousal ratings during a reappraisal task and by concurrent physiological measures such as corrugator electromyography (EMG), skin conductance response (SCR), and heart period (HP). Frequentist and Bayesian analyses indicated that inhibitory control was not associated with emotion regulation in our sample of young healthy adults. Furthermore, by implementing a full two-by-two design including a “regulate neutral” condition, the present study provides evidence that domain-general regulation effects need to be separated from domain-specific regulation effects. Finally, compared to HP and SCR, corrugator EMG emerged as a suitable peripheral physiological indicator of regulatory success that was indicative of the regulation of negative emotion.