关键词: 情绪灵活性, 影响机制整合模型, 前端因素, 加工过程因素

Abstract: Emotional flexibility is defined as individuals’ core adaptive capacity to dynamically adjust emotional responses in accordance with changing situational demands. Although existing studies have extensively explored the beneficial outcomes of diverse emotion regulation strategies and their underlying proactive processing mechanisms, they have largely neglected the independent and interactive influences of multiple predictive factors on emotional flexibility across pre-processing and online processing stages. Accordingly, the current literature presents three prominent research limitations. First, prior studies primarily focus on in-processing influencing factors while ignoring the vital role of pre-processing antecedent variables in shaping emotional flexibility. Second, most research regards emotion regulation strategies as the core of emotional flexibility and underestimates the essential function of contextual factors, despite the fact that context serves as a fundamental driving condition for flexible emotional adjustment based on the intrinsic connotation of emotional flexibility. Third, previous theoretical frameworks fail to integrate influencing factors across multi-dimensional temporal and spatial scales. Specifically, individual emotional flexibility is shaped not only by immediate situational experiences and different developmental stages throughout life but also by broad familial and social environments, as well as key interpersonal influences such as parental upbringing. To address these research gaps, the present study incorporates both pre-processing and in-processing factors and adopts a comprehensive temporal and spatial perspective, covering macro-level lifespan development and micro-level momentary stimulus processing in temporal dimension, as well as social, familial, and situational environments in spatial dimension, to construct a systematic integrated model of the mechanisms underlying emotional flexibility.
This study innovatively establishes a unified theoretical model of emotional flexibility by synthesizing antecedent factors (individual and environmental factors) and in-processing factors (cognitive components, situational characteristics, and stimulus characteristics). A series of sub-models are separately constructed to clarify the influencing pathways of personality traits, psychological capital, family factors, social factors, cognitive components, situational features, and stimulus characteristics, which are further integrated into a holistic theoretical system. The model reveals that the dynamic interaction between individual and environmental factors acts as a critical antecedent driver of emotional flexibility. Family and social environments shape individual personality traits and psychological capital, which further promote individuals’ effective perception and comprehension of complex situational information; such cyclical reciprocal interactions continuously facilitate the development and improvement of emotional flexibility. In experimental processing of emotional flexibility, cognitive components, situational features, and emotional stimulus characteristics jointly dominate real-time emotional adjustment processes. Affective representation, contextual and facial information processing, and cognitive empathy constitute the basic cognitive components of emotional flexibility. When shifts in stimulus emotional valence or valence conflicts between stimuli and situational contexts occur, additional error monitoring processing will be activated, significantly increasing the cognitive load of emotional flexible adjustment. Furthermore, the time interval between contextual priming stimuli and emotional target stimuli produces preparatory effects, while the presentation order of contextual cues and situational response modes also substantially regulate individual emotional flexibility levels.
This study provides significant theoretical and practical contributions. Theoretically, it refines and complements the theoretical framework of emotional flexibility’s influencing mechanisms, revealing the dynamic shaping rules of emotional flexibility under broad temporal and spatial dimensions. Practically, it offers reliable theoretical support for educational cultivation and clinical intervention. In educational scenarios, it provides systematic strategies for the coordinated cultivation of individual emotional flexibility among families, schools, and society. In clinical practice, it offers empirical references for the prevention and auxiliary treatment of psychological disorders and mental illnesses caused by deficient emotional flexibility.

Key words: emotional flexibility, integrated model of influencing mechanisms, antecedent factors, in- processing factors