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This is the final draft of the research proposal. My research proposal explores the effects of regulating love over time using various techniques.

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Exploring the Effectiveness of Cognitive Love Regulation Techniques Over Time 

Zoonar/Andrey Kravchenko/Alamy Stock Photo, via The New York Times (Barron, 2023).

Allison Estudillo

ENGL 21003: Writing for the Sciences

Professor Debra Williams

April 21, 2025

Introduction:

Romantic feelings can be both a wonderful thing and a painful and terrifying idea. The study “Regulation of Romantic Love Feelings: Preconceptions, Strategies and Feasibility” by Langeslag and Van Strien examined how people may attempt to control the feelings of love, which is particularly amplified when those romantic feelings are either too strong or simply unwanted. Langeslag and Van Strien found that various people often used different strategies like changing how they may think about their partner, called reappraisal, or distracting themselves entirely to amplify their romantic feelings or try and “reduce” them. Their study showed that these methods can work in the short term; however, they did not uncover whether they can work as well in the long term or what happens over time. This created an important question of whether love regulation strategies can help people get over a breakup or maybe even improve a relationship in the long run.  This study will uncover this by testing these strategies over extended periods, possibly months.  This topic is critical in places like New York City; although there are many people in the City, one may assume it should be simple to either find love or to be able to move on quickly. However, it seems to be quite the opposite. Modern life can make people feel detached and sometimes even emotionally isolated; with fast-paced routines and high stress, many people often find themselves incapable of maintaining close relationships and having difficulty building them. If people use love regulation strategies like reappraisal or distraction regularly over several weeks, they will experience a significant decrease in romantic feelings towards an ex-partner. However, there could be an improvement in emotional attachment and romantic feelings towards their current relationship, compared to those who do not use these strategies.

Background:

New York City is both a fast-paced and densely populated area; one may think it would be almost impossible for someone ever to be lonely or never to have the struggles of developing a romantic relationship. However, many young people continue to experience loneliness and have trouble creating relationships overall; even with the constant physical proximity to others, many young people from urban areas feel emotionally disconnected and sometimes unsupported and even isolated. The study “Combating the mental health challenge of loneliness among urban youth” by Raina Chhajer, Smita Chaudhry, and Aarohi Mishra showcases that loneliness can have an impact on the mental health of anyone, especially young people who are growing and are completely vulnerable, that sense of loneliness can hinder young people from understanding meaning or connection in their lives. Romantic feelings and creating a close relationship with someone else also play a critical role in this context. Building or maintaining relationships in the city, where people are constantly working and distracted, can be extremely difficult; for young people, navigating breakups and toxic patterns can make the feeling of loneliness even worse. Understanding how love affects our well-being and whether or not we can actually manage romantic feelings one may have, should become an even more pressing matter. According to the study “Regulation of Romantic Love Feelings: Preconceptions, Strategies, and Feasibility” by Langeslag and van Strien, many people believe that love is uncontrollable, and they may still try to regulate that feeling. Strategies like reappraisal where thinking differently about a person and distraction were shown to actually help either reduce or increase feelings of love short term. New York City has an intense environment where the stress of dating and heartbreak is more common than ever. Learning how to navigate by trying to regulate the feelings of love may help the youth to protect their mental health.

Romantic love not only affects or influences emotions, but it also impacts how we think or even act. The study “Cognitive Control in Romantic Love: The Roles of Infatuation and Attachment in Interference and Adaptive Cognitive Control” by Langeslag and Van Strien uncovered that although attachments that were found to be in long-term relationships can make it harder for said individual to stay focussed as well as makes having difficulty to think clearly, especially when under stress. However, an early-stage relationship does not have the same effect. In the study “Romantic Love Is Associated with Enhanced Inhibitory Control” by Sensen Song’t, Zhiling Zou, Hongwen Song, Yongming Wang, Federico d’Ivoire Uquillas, Huijun Wang, and Hong Chen, had found that people that were only recently in love were found to be better at managing negative emotions like sadness. This leads to the idea that early love might temporarily strengthen an individual emotionally. However, that effect could fade or even reverse as the relationship develops. However, not all ways of managing emotions are helpful; the study “Emotion Regulation in Romantic Relationships” by Jane M. Richards, Emily A. Butler, and James J. Gross has found that hiding your feelings, also known as suppressing your feelings, those people may seem “calm” on the outside but have worse memory and tend to lose focus more easily. Although strategies like reappraisal may help someone to either heal or maybe even grow, hiding emotions can silently add stress and mental overload for an individual. These studies show how romantic love can impact emotional well-being and cognitive functioning and how one may cope after a relationship, particularly for young people who live in New York City. Exploring how love regulation strategies work over a long period could lead to better ways to support mental health, help reduce feelings of loneliness, and promote more fulfilling relationships. 

Methods:

Langeslag S. J E., & Van Strien, J. W. (2016). Regulation of romantic love feelings: Preconceptions strategies and feasibility. PLOS ONE 11(8), e0161087.https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0161087

The study uncovered whether people could increase or decrease romantic feelings through strategies such as reappraisal or distraction. When those participants had positive thoughts about their lover or ex-partner, their feelings of attachment and love grew. However, when those participants were tasked to reduce those romantic feelings and attachments, they would be told to focus on the negative aspects of said partner or ex-partner. This supports the hypothesis by showing that love regulation can be possible in the short term. However, one thing this study did not touch upon would be that they did not see whether these effects lasted longer. This gap helps establish the niche by examining whether being distracted, or reappraisal can have a long-lasting effect on the individual or maybe a shift of emotion that may not be long-lasting.

Langeslag S. J E., & Van Steenbergen, H. (2019). Cognitive control in romantic love: The roles of Infatuation and attachment in interference and adaptive cognitive control. Cognition & Emotion, 34(3), 596-603.https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2019.1627291

This paper showcases how love can influence an individual’s thinking, more so with the idea of an attachment. This study found that people with a stronger attachment to their partner seemed less able to adjust after making a mistake. Although this study may not focus entirely on the aspect of the study, it seems to suggest that attachments might actually limit cognitive flexibility.  The results of limited flexibility have shown that it has hindered that same individual from making emotional decisions. This supports the hypothesis by examining how attachments can have measurable effects on cognitive control, showing how love may impact a person’s feelings and cognition. The hypothesis focuses on long-term effects; this study helps bring the study’s consequences to light and whether strategies such as reappraisal and distraction can help a person or hinder them mentally.

Song, S., Zou, Z., Song, H., Wang, Y., Uquillas, F. D., Wang, H., & Chen, H. (2016). Romantic love is associated with enhanced inhibitory control in an emotional stop-signal task. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 1574.https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01574 

This study found that partners who were found to be in the early stage of their relationship would have a better time controlling their own emotions, and this would be amplified when in stressful or emotional situations. However, this would be the opposite for those not in relationships. This shows how people who were to get into a relationship and were in that early stage of said relationship would have better emotional control. However, with that in mind, it raised whether this early-stage relationship effect would last long. It would be important to uncover how love evolves and whether different strategies, such as appraisal and distraction, could help maintain this effect or even restore that emotional control that always appears at the early stages of a meaningful romantic relationship. This study supports the hypothesis by showing that early on, love can provide better emotional control; however, without exploring whether that emotional control stays or goes, it leaves many confused. The research being proposed builds on this idea by asking whether emotional control can be preserved or restored in any way with the use of strategies; however, the study limitations would be how it only compares singles to people in early-stage love and does track on those who same people over time, which is what this study will hope to address.

Richards, J. M., Butler, E. A., & Gross, J. J. (2003). Emotion regulation in romantic relationships: The cognitive consequences of concealing feelings. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 20(5), 599–620. https://doi.org/10.1177/02654075030205002 

This study uncovered how couples would handle their own emotions during arguments. When said couples positively used reappraisal, they would remember their conversation even better. However, if they had negatively used reappraisal, they would have the opposite effect, where the individual would have a hard time remembering how the conversation even went; they would remember the way they had felt during the moment. This study shows how hiding emotions can harm the person when they try to recall memories, and it is important to take this into account, especially when trying to produce this new study on how people manage love over time with the help of different strategies. This supports the hypothesis by showing how reappraisal strategies may help with people’s memory, but by using it to suppress feelings it can then do more harm than good for said individual. The research proposal looks at how people regulate their romantic feelings over time, and it should also consider how cognitive health may benefit from using strategies such as reappraisal.  However, in the original study, emotion regulation in romantic relationships had focused only on short-term effects, leading to more possible ideas of whether these effects can build up over time. This research proposal will contribute to that original study by examining more long-term emotional and cognitive outcomes regarding love regulation.

Outcomes:

This study has aimed to gather information on whether or not strategies such as reappraisal and distraction can change how a person feels, more specifically, their romantic feelings. However, this study aims to go beyond just the short-term effects. It aims to discover the long-term effects, whether weeks or months. Both Langeslag and Van Strien had uncovered in their study how methods such as reappraisal and distraction had worked; however, only in the short term and never searched on whether these effects had actually lasted or had helped during a long-term relationship that is healing or overall relationship growth. This study uncovered how couples would handle their own emotions during arguments. When said couples positively used reappraisal, they would remember their conversation even better. However, if they had negatively used reappraisal, they would have the opposite effect, where the individual would have a hard time remembering how the conversation even went; they would remember how they had felt during the moment. This study shows how hiding emotions can harm the person when they try to recall memories, and it is important to take this into account, especially when trying to produce this new study on how people manage love over time with the help of different strategies. However it had been found that when using these strategies to suppress feelings it can do more harm than good for said individual. The research proposal looks at how people regulate their romantic feelings over time, and it should also consider how cognitive health may benefit from using strategies such as reappraisal.  However, in the original study, emotion regulation in romantic relationships had focused only on short-term effects, leading to more possible ideas of whether these effects can build up over time. This research proposal will contribute to that original study by examining more long-term emotional and cognitive outcomes regarding love regulation. Song et al. found that early love can provide a better sense of emotional control for individuals who are found to be in that early stage. However, they never explored whether that emotional control had lasted, whether it faded, or could even get restored through regulation. Langeslag and Van Steenbergen had a different study in which they found that couples with a strong attachment can have weakened cognitive flexibility; with that in mind, it left questions hanging in the air of whether strategies like reappraisal can improve mental control. Richard et al. study has also shown how suppressing emotions can hurt memories and focus, and although reappraisal helps, it is only stated in the short term as well.  This study helps fill a missing piece by testing whether love regulation works over time. This information could help people dealing with struggles in their relationships or breakups that left them with a hard time, which is even more important for people living in cities such as New York City. It could help many people feel less lonely and improve their mental health and relationships.

Reference Page

Barron, J. (2023, September 13). LOVE is back in New York, restored. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/13/nyregion/love-is-back-in-new-york-restored.html

Chhajer, R., Chaudhry, S., & Mishra, A. (2024). Combating the mental health challenge of loneliness among urban youth: could finding meaning in life and experiencing thriving enhance their well-being? BMC Public Health, 24(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-024-21185-2

Langeslag, S. J. E., & Van Steenbergen, H. (2019). Cognitive control in romantic love: the roles of infatuation and attachment in interference and adaptive cognitive control. Cognition & Emotion, 34(3), 596–603. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2019.1627291

Langeslag, S. J. E., & Van Strien, J. W. (2016). Regulation of Romantic Love Feelings: Preconceptions, Strategies, and feasibility. PLoS ONE, 11(8), e0161087. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0161087

Richards, J. M., Butler, E. A., & Gross, J. J. (2003). Emotion regulation in romantic relationships: The Cognitive consequences of concealing feelings. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 20(5), 599–620. https://doi.org/10.1177/02654075030205002 
Song, S., Zou, Z., Song, H., Wang, Y., Uquillas, F. D., Wang, H., & Chen, H. (2016). Romantic Love Is Associated with Enhanced Inhibitory Control in an Emotional Stop-Signal Task. Frontiers in Psychology, 07. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01574