Abstract
Previous studies have reported the effect of emotion regulation (ER) strategies on both individual and social decision-making, however, the effect of regulation on socially driven emotions independent of decisions is still unclear. In the present study, we investigated the neural effects of using reappraisal to both up- and down-regulate socially driven emotions. Participants played the Dictator Game (DG) in the role of recipient while undergoing fMRI, and concurrently applied the strategies of either up-regulation (reappraising the proposer's intentions as more negative), down-regulation (reappraising the proposer's intentions as less negative), as well as a baseline “look” condition. Results showed that regions responding to the implementation of reappraisal (effect of strategy, that is, “regulating regions”) were the inferior and middle frontal gyrus, temporo parietal junction and insula bilaterally. Importantly, the middle frontal gyrus activation correlated with the frequency of regulatory strategies in daily life, with the insula activation correlating with the perceived ability to reappraise the emotions elicited by the social situation. Regions regulated by reappraisal (effect of regulation, that is, “regulated regions”) were the striatum, the posterior cingulate and the insula, showing increased activation for the up-regulation and reduced activation for down-regulation, both compared to the baseline condition. When analyzing the separate effects of partners' behavior, selfish behavior produced an activation of the insula, not observed when subjects were treated altruistically. Here we show for the first time that interpersonal ER strategies can strongly affect neural responses when experiencing socially driven emotions. Clinical implications of these findings are also discussed to understand how the way we interpret others' intentions may affect the way we emotionally react.
Highlights
Perspectives on affective neuroscience suggest that brain structures which generate emotional responses can be successfully regulated by control regions when subjects are asked to apply cognitive strategies to emotion eliciting stimuli such as unpleasant pictures (Golkar et al, 2012; Ochsner et al, 2012)
Mechanisms of basic emotion self-regulation have been, at least in part, recently uncovered, surprisingly little empirical work exists on an important topic: the specific neurocognitive mechanisms behind interpersonal emotion regulation (IER), a particular form of Emotion regulation (ER) applied to socially driven emotions
Results demonstrate that the level of anger significantly differed from most of other emotions [anger-disgust: t(19) = 2058, p < 0.05; anger-surprise t(19) = 2868, p < 0.01; anger-happiness: t(19) = 6064, p < 0.001; anger-sadness: t(19) = 296, p < 0.05]; disgust differed from happiness [t(19) = 4807, p < 0.001] but not from surprise [t(19) = 1539, p = 0.14], and from sadness [t(19) = 847, p = 0.408]; surprise differed from happiness [t(19) = 4578, p < 0.001], but not from sadness [t(19) = −607, p = 0.55]; happiness differed from sadness [t(19) = −4188, p < 0.001]
Summary
Perspectives on affective neuroscience suggest that brain structures which generate emotional responses can be successfully regulated by control regions when subjects are asked to apply cognitive strategies to emotion eliciting stimuli such as unpleasant pictures (Golkar et al, 2012; Ochsner et al, 2012). Previous studies have examined the processes that individuals use to influence which emotions they generate, when they do so, and how these emotions are experienced or expressed (Gross, 1998), and we know that different attentive, behavioral, emotional, or interpretative strategies can be used at an interpersonal level (Fonagy, 2006). Of particular interest for the present paper are studies examining the use of a strategy to regulate an existing or ongoing emotional response, typically known as reappraisal. This strategy involves reinterpreting the meaning of a stimulus to change one’s emotional response to it (Gross, 1998). Reappraisal applied to interpersonal contexts, that is, focusing on the interpretations of others’intentions, is relatively
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