Contextual Information and Reappraisal of Negative Emotional Events

In this study the effect of the contextual-information induced reappraisal on modifying the emotional response elicited by failure has been investigated. To an academic or job setting failure (control condition) it has been added one of two types of contextual information (knowing that many other people failed the same task and knowing that it would be possible to try the failed task again) affecting three dimensions of failure appraisal: responsibility, sharing, and remediability. In an experimental condition both information were added. Four hundred and eighty undergraduates participated in this study. The experimental design was a 2 (negative emotional event) x 4 (contextual information) between-subjects design. The first variable was included in the design as covariate. We expected that generalized failure should imply a decrease of responsibility and an increase of sharing, the possibility of retrying should imply an increase in the remediability, and that the presence of both types of information should produce all the abovementioned effects. Our findings substantially corroborated the hypotheses.