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Social sciences
- Biological psychology
- Psychopathology
- Motivation and emotion
Everyone experiences emotionally challenging events in life, but it remains unclear why for some
people this causes sustained distress, while others can regulate their emotions and adapt to a
changing situation. Cognitive flexibility, the ability to flexibly adapt one’ thoughts in response to
events, is important in the context of such emotional events. While cognitive flexibility has been
related to resilience and effective emotion regulation, cognitive inflexibility is observed across
several psychiatric disorders. Understanding the role of cognitive flexibility in emotion regulation is
essential because effective emotion regulation facilitates resilience while maladaptive emotion
regulation underlies several psychiatric disorders. However, current research is mostly crosssectional.
This project aims to further investigate the role of cognitive flexibility in emotion
regulation and stress resilience. First, we will use a prospective and experimental design with
neurostimulation to clarify the causal role of the ability to be cognitive flexible in experienced
mental distress, resilience and emotion regulation. Second, we will analyse how the propensity to
adopt a more flexible cognitive style in response to a (changing) context relates to emotion
regulation and resilience in both a healthy sample and a clinical sample with emotion regulation
impairments. Findings from the project could be relevant for development of more sophisticated
therapeutic and prevention programmes.