Multiple goal salience and emotion regulation in negative-feedback situations: A latent profile analysis

Abstract

People react very differently to negative feedback. From an emotion-regulation perspective, this can be explained by reference to their salient goals, such as to feel or to perform better. In the present research, we adopted a person-centered approach to 1) identify subgroups of negative feedback recipients based on the salience of their goals to feel and to perform better, 2) predict profile membership using situational and dispositional context factors, and 3) link these profiles to differences in strategy use. Based on a secondary dataset from four negative-feedback studies (N = 666), latent profile analysis revealed four profiles with relatively similar levels of the salience of the goal to feel better but differences in the salience of the goal to perform better. The extent to which negative feedback recipients pay attention to their emotions, consider the feedback legitimate, and experience intense negative affect predicted profile membership. Members of profiles with a strong goal to perform better tended to use more engagement (reappraisal, feedback focus) and less disengagement strategies (distraction, feedback removal). These results demonstrate the value of the person-centered approach when studying emotion regulation and illustrate shared characteristics of negative feedback recipients that differ in their emotion-regulation strategy use.