Abstract
The ability to exert control over emotions, termed emotion regulation (ER), is vital for everyday functioning. ER success may be influenced by processes relating to the anticipation (prior to active regulation) and implementation (during active regulation) of ER strategy use. We investigated whether brain activity patterns recorded using electroencephalography (EEG) during the first second of anticipation and implementation of two ER strategies-distraction and reappraisal-were related to regulation success. Participants viewed negative images that evoked disgust and sadness. Before each image was presented, participants were cued to either passively view the image or decrease their emotional responses. ER success scores were calculated from subsequent self-reported disgust and sadness ratings. Using multivariate support vector regression, ER success scores were predicted from spatiotemporal patterns of event-related potentials during the first second of anticipation and implementation phases of each ER strategy. For both sadness and disgust, reappraisal success could be predicted during anticipation, while distraction success could be predicted during implementation. These findings suggest that early anticipatory cognitive processes are a key determinant of reappraisal success, but may not be similarly important for distraction. This may be because reappraisal is more cognitively demanding than distraction, requiring enhanced preparation of mental resources.
Highlights
The ability to exert control over emotions, termed emotion regulation (ER), is vital for everyday functioning
Using EEG, we investigated whether trial-by-trial differences in ER success for emotionally evocative stimuli could be predicted from neural activity patterns emerging during the first second of the anticipation and implementation of both distraction and reappraisal
For all scales, including the TAS20 and the RESS, on average our sample did not differ more than one standard deviation from the population averages, suggesting that our participants were not atypical or unable to perform ER
Summary
The ability to exert control over emotions, termed emotion regulation (ER), is vital for everyday functioning. Using multivariate support vector regression, ER success scores were predicted from spatiotemporal patterns of event-related potentials during the first second of anticipation and implementation phases of each ER strategy. An important aspect that is still poorly understood is whether the success of ER depends on one’s ability to mentally prepare for using a specific strategy—in particular, the role of fast processes immediately after learning that a negative emotional event will subsequently occur (Shafir, Schwartz, Blechert, & Sheppes, 2015). Emotions involve changes in subjective experience, behaviour, and physiology (Gross & Levenson, 1997) Both positive and negative emotions can be maladaptive if dysregulated, much of the ER literature focuses on regulation of negative emotions. We reasoned that since disgust is typically considered a high-arousal emotion and sadness a low-arousal emotion (Posner, Russell, & Peterson, 2005; Russell, 1980), and disgust is typically recognized more and unfolds more rapidly than sadness (Costa et al, 2014; Keltner, Sauter, Tracy, & Cowen, 2019; Verduyn & Lavrijsen, 2015), studying these two emotions might allow for testing whether the importance of preparing for emotion regulation may depend on the specific emotion
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