THE ROLE OF CONTEXTUAL VARIABLES IN INTRA- AND INTER-INDIVIDUAL COGNITIVE FLEXIBILITY

Abstract

Background: Emotion regulation and coping theorists propose dynamic process models, which highlight the interaction of person and situation to inform adaption. The empirical research on self-regulation supports the idea that adaptive functioning is dependent on the ability to flexibly switch strategies to match the context of the situation. While flexibility has long been discussed as a hallmark of effective adaption, assessing coping response as adaptive or maladaptive by the degree of flexibility in responding is relatively new and has largely been studied by asking participants to self-report how flexible they are in approaching stressful situations. The current study examined the utility of operationalizing cognitive flexibility in terms of cognitive variability, i.e., the ability to generate multiple coping/emotion regulation strategies in response to a stressor and flexibly implement strategies based on individual assessment of situation-strategy fit. Methods: Participants were presented with hypothetical stressors across two life domains (financial, relational) and asked to generate all the possible ways they could respond. Free responses were coded into one of 11 strategy types and composite scores were calculated across the stressors to produce individual-level scores for repertoire of responses generated and situation-strategy fit. These proxies for cognitive flexibility were used in hierarchical linear regression models to determine their predictive value for subjective satisfaction with life and psychological distress outcomes. Other measures of flexibility were included to demonstrate additional predictive value of the current conceptualizations of cognitive flexibility over and above existing measures. Results: Results support predictions that individuals would respond in varied ways as situational demands placed on the participant change and point to greater demand for social support, planful problem-solving, and emotional expression in response to stress in the financial domain and greater demand for confrontation, distancing, accepting responsibility, escape-avoidance, mindfulness-acceptance, and resignation in response to stress in the relational domain. Findings support hypotheses that there is a significant predictive value of the measured ability to be flexible over existing self-report measures across outcomes. Findings indicated that increases in situation-strategy fit were predictive of increases in subjective satisfaction with life and decreases in psychological distress; increases in the repertoire of strategies generated predicted decreases in subjective satisfaction with life and increases in psychological distress. Discussion: The current study was among the first to attempt operationalization of cognitive flexibility in a contextualized and meaningful way and was successful as a proof-of-concept demonstrating individuals do select varying strategies as situational demands change. This study demonstrated fit matters and provided support for the theory and past research claiming that strategies are differentially adaptive in different contexts. More importantly, we provided a starting point to continue to build on and refine more precise ways of defining and calculating the facets of flexibility we know to be important. Future research should continue to refine measurement of cognitive flexibility, increase the number of stressors participants respond to and span measurement across other life domains, and increase measurement to multiple time points to better approximate the dynamic process of self-regulatory flexibility.