Steph Gagnon

I thought these two studies were a very cool application of cognitive reappraisal; its
impressive that the effects of the manipulation carried over to decisions on a separate
task, and that the brief training had an influence up to 5 months later. It would be
interesting to see if these effects held outside of the laboratory (e.g., training in the lab,
and then having another experimenter test in school/home/another place); in other
words, how necessary is the specific laboratory context in facilitating the transfer of the
cognitive reappraisal techniques from the initial images to the political attitudes? Also,
what were the actual training images like? Was there any reference to war/explicit
conflict, or were they taken from a completely different context?

How specific vs. general is this effect? Experiment 1 noted that the effects of
reappraisal did not carry over to other negative emotions (and thus seemed specific to
anger), but is it possible that this carried over to other emotions, e.g., reward
responsivity (also high in approach motivation)? Or, what if this manipulation had been
targeting another emotion, like fear -- is it possible that reappraisal training for fear could
transfer to other negative and/or positive emotions? Further, if the cognitive reappraisal
had been more broad/varied in nature, i.e., not focused specifically on anger, would be
observed results be stronger or weaker?

Are there any individual differences that would explain the tendency for the cognitive
reappraisal manipulation to influence political attitudes? Were there any differences
among the 3 types of political affiliations? How much of the effects are due to the
cognitive reappraisal manipulation decreasing anger & increasing support of the policies
vs. the control condition potentially increasing anger & decreasing support?