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Emotion regulation research has exponentially grown in the past several years. However, to date, there is little information regarding its relation to cheerfulness, understood as a positive affective predisposition to sense of humor. The aim of the present study was to analyze the relationship between emotion regulation strategies and the state and trait dimensions of cheerfulness. More precisely, we wanted to explore whether trait cheerfulness moderates the effect of emotion regulation strategies on the participants' reported affective state after they are exposed to both amusing and sad stimuli. To achieve our goal, we randomly assigned 248 undergraduate psychology students (178 women) to one of the following conditions: expressive exaggeration, down-regulation reappraisal, expressive suppression, and control. They watched amusing, neutral, and sad clips, reporting their affective state several times throughout the study. In general, the results showed that the exaggeration group showed the largest affective changes, whereas the down-regulation reappraisal group showed the smallest affective changes with both amusing and sad stimuli. Critically, trait cheerfulness moderated the changes in the participants' affective state as a consequence of their being exposed to the amusing film clip in the exaggeration group. The effects were not affected by social desirability or reappraisal/suppression tendencies (as measured with the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire). The results are discussed highlighting the idea that the higher level of sensitivity to amusing affective contexts of high-trait-cheerfulness individuals could be due to a higher ability to exaggerate the behavior together with their more habitual and efficient use of reappraisal strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper was to study whether trait cheerfulness modulates changes in state cheerfulness as a result of exposing participants to affective stimuli. Two studies with a within-participant experimental design were carried out. Forty-eight (33 women) and sixty-four (45 women) undergraduate psychology students were selected as Sample 1 and Sample 2, respectively, for scoring high or low on the Trait Form of the State-Trait-Cheerfulness Inventory (STCI-T; Ruch et al. in Humor Int J Humor Res 9:303-339, 1996; Ruch et al. in Personal Individ Differ 22:477-491, 1997). Participants watched amusing, neutral, and sad film clips and reported their affective states before and after viewing them. In the second study, heart rate and skin conductance level were also recorded. Results showed that people with high trait cheerfulness reported greater changes in state cheerfulness when exposed to both amusing and sad film clips, showing larger increases and decreases in state cheerfulness, respectively, than participants with low trait cheerfulness. Effects were not mediated by social desirability. Furthermore, people with low trait cheerfulness showed a greater heart rate deceleration during the visioning of the clips compared to high trait cheerfulness participants, especially in an amusing scene with high emotional load. No modulation on trait cheerfulness was found for skin conductance level. Data with self-report and electrophysiological measures are discussed, highlighting that high trait cheerfulness people are more permeable to affective events, perhaps showing a better understanding and management of them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]