Emotion regulation by implementation intention is generalizable to unspecified situations: The nature of the underlying goal matters.

Implementation intentions (II), which specify how to respond in a given situation based on the goal, is known for its automaticity of regulating emotion to the specified situation. However, it is unknown whether such regulatory effects can be generalized to unspecified situations. For this purpose, we performed four experiments, each consisting of specified (bloody) and unspecified (non-bloody) stimuli with the goal of disgust (Exp.1-2) or unpleasant (Exp.3) regulation. Results showed that II reduced negative feelings for both bloody and non-bloody situations (Exp.1). This generalization effect was absent for goal-unrelated, frightening situations (Exp.2). However, broadening the goal extended the generalization effect to the frightening situation, an effect further amplified when a flexible response was used (Exp.3). Moreover, the II buildup did not disrupt feelings for pleasant situations (Exp.4). These results provide the first evidence that II-based emotion regulation is generalizable to unspecified, goal-related situations and that increasing goal coverage expands the generalization. Copyright © 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.