The relationship between affective flexibility and emotion regulation in non-clinical populations: A scoping review

Subcomponent of executive functions, affective flexibility is an essential factor for the adaptation of individuals. It has been proven that this ability can decrease in case of a stressing situation where regulating ones emotions become diffiicult. The purpose of this scoping review was to explore a hypothesized reversed relationship between affective flexibility and emotion regulation, exploring if the ability of regulating ones emotion can be improved by greater capacities in affective flexibility. This search conducted between April 24th and May 6th, 2022, on PsycInfo, PubMed, and Scopus revealed three correlational studies (Grol & De Raedt, 2021; Malooly & al., 2013; Wen & Yoon, 2019) and one interventional study (Malooly, 2016). The PRISMA guideline was used as guidance and he NHLBI tools were applied to assess quality appraisal. Affective flexibility correlated with emotion regulation: this analysis revealed a significant and positive correlation between the two concepts. However, two studies suggested that affective flexibility was not always adaptive and qualified their results based on whether the material has a positive or negative valence; more efficient shifting of attention towards non-affective aspects of positive information (e.g., lower switch costs) was associated with more reported use of maladaptive emotion regulation strategy (Grol & De Raedt, 2021; Malooly & al., 2013). Moreover, when affective training sessions were administered, subjects did not increase their capacity in affective flexibility but still improved in emotion regulation. These results highlight the role of affective flexibility in adaptive emotion regulation strategies, the need to understand the underlying mechanisms, the need for interventional designs that include training sessions and the necessity to administer reliable emotional flexibility tasks.