Differential effects of various types of implementation intentions on the regulation of disgust

As little is known about the effectiveness of different types of implementation intentions on the regulation of emotions, the present experiments focused on the differential effectiveness of various implementation intentions on the down-regulation of disgust responses. In Experiment 1, an antecedent- focused implementation intention based on cognitive reappraisal allowed participants to rate disgusting pictures as being less unpleasant than participants in the control condition or the goal intention condition, while the reported intensity (arousal) ratings stayed unaffected. In Experiment 2, participants with a response-focused implementation intention, devised to regulate the intensity of the emotional experience, reported a lower evoked arousal after seeing the disgusting slides, while the valence ratings remained unchanged. Thus, implementation intentions were shown to exert differential effects depending on whether they targeted one or another emotional dimension (i.e., valence vs. arousal).