One of our key interests is how people flexibly shift between emotional tasks, especially when they have the freedom to choose what to engage with. To investigate this, we developed a novel affective task-switching paradigm using emotional facial expressions. This paradigm allows us to examine how emotional content impacts voluntary decisions to switch between tasks, as well as how it affects performance.

This line of work sheds light on the mechanisms underlying affective flexibility—a capacity that plays a central role in mental health and adaptive functioning. Beyond validating this task, we aim to explore individual and population-level differences in affective flexibility, contributing to our broader understanding of cognitive-affective adaptation.