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Abstract

Safe driving campaigns frequently use threat-appeals to portray the consequences of risky driving and generate negative emotion. However, increasing perceived risk is often ineffective in motivating behaviour change. A potential approach to increasing the efficacy of safe driving campaigns is the incorporation of emotion regulation strategies. This study used an independent-groups experimental design with a sample of 53 participants (21 males, 32 females) aged 18–65 years (M = 43) to investigate if employing the emotion regulation strategies of distraction and cognitive reappraisal reduces negative emotion while viewing a distracted driving campaign film. Findings revealed that employing emotion regulation strategies significantly reduced negative emotion with a medium effect size, in comparison to the control condition, confirming the hypothesis.

Keywords: emotion regulation, distracted driving, reappraisal, distraction, behaviour change, threat-appeal