Coping with failure: Testing the short- and long-term effectiveness of emotion regulation strategies
Failure is experienced in many domains of life and inevitable. Yet, new research highlights how people struggle to learn from failure because they avoid the resulting negative emotions. Emotion regulation strategies could allow people to control negative emotions in response to failure and improve goal pursuit, providing a target for interventions. However, emotion regulation has not been systematically investigated in response to failure, resulting in a lack of consideration of the role of emotion regulation in the relationship between failure and subsequent success in goal pursuit. The current PhD project will use three studies to explore whether and which emotion regulation strategies are effective in coping with failure, considering the short- and long-term implications on both well-being and goal pursuit. Study 1 will use a combination of questionnaires and daily reconstruction methodology over several days to explore which emotion regulation strategies people use after failure experiences, and how these relate to well-being and subsequent goal progression. Study 2a and 2b will use vignettes and a game task to causally establish which emotion regulation strategies improve well-being but also facilitate goal pursuit (e.g., persistence, success) after failure. Study 3 will evaluate whether training emotion regulation strategies via an intervention improves well-being and goal pursuit across health and academic behaviours in the long-term (3-6 months). The results can inform theory and interventions and address the “Healthy Thriving Communities” theme by investigating how people can cope with failure and be resilient, resourceful, and adaptable to change.