An Experimental Study on Dampening as an Emotional Contrast Avoidance Strategy in a Sample of English-speaking Adults: Comparing a Dampening Task to an Experiential and a Cognitive Control Task

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The current study builds on a previous online study from our lab (https://osf.io/gvhqj; Gérardy et al., in prep.). This study focuses on dampening of positive affect, which has been identified as a mechanism that (1) exacerbates negative affect and maintains low positive affect, and (2) has a positive and significant association with depressive symptoms both cross-sectionally and prospectively with a medium to large effect size (Bean et al., 2022). Despite evidence demonstrating the maladaptive nature of dampening, the underlying reasons why individuals engage in this response style remain insufficiently understood. Addressing this gap is essential for refining interventions, making the examination of the function of dampening a critical next step in this line of research. A substantial body of research has investigated the motives underlying the maintenance of negative affect, based on the Contrast Avoidance Model (CAM; Newman & Llera, 2011). The CAM originates from research on worry in the context of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). According to the CAM, individuals with GAD use worry as a strategy to create and maintain negative affect to avoid experiencing negative emotional contrasts (i.e., sharp changes in affective valence when shifting from a positive or neutral state to a negative state). In essence, the CAM is composed of three main components: (1) fear of negative emotional shifts, (2) use of worry to create and maintain negative affect, and (3) preference for momentary positive emotional contrasts and discomfort with resting positive states (Newman & Llera, 2011). There is growing evidence that suggests that the avoidance of negative emotional contrasts is not limited to the use of worry as an emotion regulation strategy. For instance, Kim and Newman (2022) investigated how worry and rumination influence the strength of emotional contrasts. They argued that worry and rumination induce different types of emotions (i.e., anxiety and fear for worry and sadness for rumination), which may lower emotional contrasts. In their study, they examined pure GAD, pure depressed, and non-anxious/non-depressed controls who were randomly assigned to three different inductions: worry, rumination, and relaxation, and then exposed to two types of emotional clips (i.e., eliciting fear or sadness) in a counterbalanced order. Results indicated that regardless of the disorder, both worry and rumination facilitated the avoidance of negative emotional contrasts, with worry leading to greater avoidance of fear contrasts and rumination to greater avoidance of sadness contrasts (i.e., smaller increase in negative affect for participants in the worry/rumination condition when being exposed to fear/sadness compared to participants in the relaxation condition). Prior correlational research has suggested that the avoidance of strong emotional fluctuations may as well contribute to dampening of positive affect (Bogaert et al., 2025; Malivoire et al., 2022; Yoon & Rottenberg, 2020), which is consistent with the CAM. Building on this work, our lab conducted the first experimental investigation applying the CAM to dampening of positive affect using experimentally induced dampening (Gérardy et al., in prep.). Participants from an adult community sample viewed a set of 18 pictures eliciting happiness and were subsequently randomized to either a dampening task or a relaxation task, followed by exposure to 18 pictures eliciting sadness. Results indicated that relative to relaxation, dampening of positive affect facilitated the avoidance of sharp negative emotional contrasts. Consistent with the CAM, these findings support the view of dampening of positive affect as an emotion regulation response to positive affect aimed at maintaining neutral or negative affect (or low positive affect) to avoid sharp negative emotional shifts. The experimental manipulation was informed by prior work, demonstrating the effectiveness of dampening inductions. For example, dampening inductions in the lab (vs. emotion-focus amplifying, self-focus amplifying, or control) significantly reduced positive affect and increased negative affect in healthy adults and turned positive experiences unpleasant (Burr et al., 2017). The current study differs from Gérardy et al. (in prep.) in three aspects. First, future lab studies including physiological measures (i.e., facial electromyography [fEMG], electrodermal activity, and potentially electrocardiography) are currently being designed to replicate and build upon the findings of the current study. To facilitate the transfer from the online self-report format to the planned lab setting, the experimental manipulation used in Gérardy et al. (in prep.) has been modified: condition-specific instructions will be presented simultaneously with a set of happiness-inducing pictures. Including perceptual stimuli during experimental manipulation, which is common practice in fEMG research (e.g., de Vries et al., 2025), increases the likelihood of registering fEMG signals. This design allows for the effects of the dampening (vs. control) instructions to be examined while reducing the risk of confounding effects by keeping perceptual stimuli constant within participants (pre-vs. during the experimental manipulation) and across conditions. Second, in contrast to the relaxation ‘control’ condition in Gérardy et al. (in prep.), the current study replaces this condition with two control conditions to enhance comparability with the cognitive focus in the dampening task and to reduce the risk of unintended increases in positive affect induced by somatic relaxation (e.g., Jain et al., 2007). More specifically, in addition to the dampening condition, a cognitive control condition and an experiential control condition will be included in the current study. The three conditions only differ in the manipulation phase: all participants will view a happiness-inducing set of pictures while completing a condition-specific task. Participants in the dampening condition will follow the dampening task similar to Gérardy et al., in prep.). Those in the cognitive control condition will be instructed to inspect the pictures based on visual features, and those in the experiential control condition will be instructed to look at the facial expressions portrayed by the people in the pictures while remembering when they felt in a similar way in their own life. Third, in this study, manipulation checks will be included in all conditions to ensure the manipulations are implemented successfully. In short, the aim of this online experimental study is to build further upon the findings of Gérardy et al. (in prep.), with a refined design to facilitate the translation to the lab in future studies informed by methodological insights from Gérardy et al. (in prep.). More specifically, this study will examine whether a dampening task reduces the strength of negative emotional contrasts compared to a cognitive control task and an experiential control task. Similar to Gérardy et al. (in prep.), participants will first be exposed to a happiness-inducing set of pictures, after which they will undergo the manipulation for which they will be randomized to either of the three conditions. After that, participants will be exposed to a sadness-inducing set of pictures. Before (at T0) and after (at T1) the happiness induction, after the manipulation (at T2), and after the sadness induction (at T3), positive and negative affect are assessed using a short questionnaire. Lastly, participants will be exposed to a mood repairment picture set.

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