The effects of perceived controllability on decision making and affective processing

We often face challenging events that require regulating our emotions to guide appropriate decision making. For instance, the negative feeling associated with being stuck in traffic that will make you late for work can cause undue stress and have maladaptive consequences on our behavior and health. One way to cope with negative emotions is to exert control over the situation, for instance, by taking another route and avoiding the traffic. Both scenarios may get you to your destination at the same time, but an individual may be more satisfied by finding an alternative path as it involved perceiving control over one’s environment. Here, perceiving control and exerting choice may serve as a way to regulate one’s emotions. The vast literature on perception of control suggests that it can be a powerful motivator by allowing one to assert their preference. Indeed, people feel more satisfied, competent, and engaged when they have an opportunity to exercise choice. The act of choosing itself, or exercising choice has also been found to be inherently rewarding, motivating the idea that perceiving control may be a means for regulation emotions during exposure to aversive stimuli. Although research has examined the influence of perceived controllability on specific domains such as pain, medical conditions, and fear conditioning, its effect on general negative emotions is yet to be explored. This dissertation research examines the influence of perceiving control on decision making and affective processing. The first four studies explore how exercising choice modulates emotional responses elicited by negative outcomes such as pictures that depict negative scenarios from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS). Experiments 1—4 explored how exercising choice modulates emotional responses elicited by negative outcomes. Across the experiments, participants showed a preference for choice, but emotional influences based on perceived controllability were only observed during specific categories of pictures (e.g., grief). In Experiment 5, we investigated how reward sensitivity contributes to neural responses associated with free and forced choices and found that individuals with high reward sensitivity recruit regions involved in attentional control and response selection given the opportunity for choice. Finally, Experiment 6 examined the dynamic interplay between brain regions involved in affective processes underlying choice anticipation. Here, we found distinct neural patterns involving cortical-striatal pathways during the anticipation of choice. Taken together, the studies have the potential to inform how individuals can employ a stance that involves perceiving control in negative contexts to effectively regulate one’s emotions and for adaptive decision making.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical referencesby Catherine Ch