Interoceptive awareness and perceived control moderate the relationship between cognitive reappraisal, self-esteem, and cardiac activity in daily life.

Cognitive reappraisal has been discussed to dampen emotional experience and foster health and well-being. Recent theorizing suggests that the benefits of reappraisal might depend on the feasibility to exert control in a given situation and the ability of an individual to sensitively attend to organismic cues (interoception). This study examined the interplay of habitual reappraisal, interoceptive awareness and perceived control on psychological (self-esteem) and physiological (heart rate variability) adjustment in daily life. A sample of 111 participants was monitored throughout 12 h. Habitual reappraisal was assessed via the emotion regulation questionnaire and interoception via a heartbeat detection task (method of constant stimuli). An ecological momentary assessment protocol was used to record short-term heart rate variability (HRV) as an indicator of cardiac vagal tone, self-esteem and perceived control in daily life. Higher use of reappraisal was associated with higher self-esteem particularly in good heartbeat detectors when perceived control in daily life was low. Conversely, habitual reappraisal was unrelated to momentary self-esteem in poor heartbeat detectors. Moreover, habitual reappraisal predicted higher HRV in daily life when perceived control was low, and reappraisal tended to be positively related with HRV in good, but not in poor heartbeat detectors. Together the findings suggest that the benefits of habitual reappraisal in daily life may depend on perceived control and interoceptive accuracy, thus supporting the assumption that the effects of reappraisal in daily life are more complex.