Taking Familiar Others' Perspectives to Regulate Our Own Emotion: An Event-Related Potential Study.

Yi Lei,Yajie Wang,Jinxia Wang,Hong Li,Chaolun Wang,Yixue Lou

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.01419

Abstract

Current research on emotion regulation has mainly focused on Gross’s cognitive strategies for regulating negative emotion; however, little attention has been paid to whether social cognitive processes can be used to regulate both positive and negative emotions. We considered perspective-taking as an aspect of social cognition, and investigated whether it would affect one’s own emotional response. The present study used a block paradigm and event-related potential (ERP) technology to explore this question. A 3 (perspective: self vs. pessimistic familiar other vs. optimistic familiar other) × 3 (valence: positive vs. neutral vs. negative) within-group design was employed. Thirty-six college students participated and considered their own or target others’ feelings about pictures with different valences. Results showed that positive emotional responses were more neutral under a pessimistic familiar other perspective, and more positive under an optimistic familiar other perspective, and vice versa for negative emotional responses. In ERP results, compared with a self-perspective, taking familiar others’ perspectives elicited reductions in P3 (370–410 ms) and LPP (400–800 ms) difference waves. These findings suggested that taking a pessimistic or optimistic familiar other perspective affects emotion regulation by changing later processing of emotional information.

Highlights

Emotion regulation refers to the processes by which individuals influence what emotions they have, when they have them, and how they experience and express these emotions (Gross, 1998a)
It has been argued that the reduction of late positive potential (LPP) can be used as a valid marker of emotion regulation (Hajcak and Nieuwenhuis, 2006; Thiruchselvam et al, 2011; Cauwenberge et al, 2017). Given these sources of evidence, our study focused on whether taking pessimistic or optimistic familiar other perspectives would influence participants’ judgment of the valence of pictures by using event-related potential (ERP) technology; providing evidence for the correlation between perspective-taking and emotion regulation
The means and standard deviations of the STAI and BDI scores were 44.39 ± 5.09, 46.50 ± 6.58, and 12.86 ± 7.82. Neither of these measures was significantly correlated with our dependent variable of affect ratings nor did they moderate the effect of perspective

Summary

Introduction

Emotion regulation refers to the processes by which individuals influence what emotions they have, when they have them, and how they experience and express these emotions (Gross, 1998a). As a fundamental aspect of social cognition (Schwarzkopf et al, 2014), perspective-taking refers to stepping out of one’s own experience and imagining another individual’s emotions, perceptions, and motivations from that person’s perspective (Galinsky et al, 2006). The essential feature is to consider the other’s viewpoint (Kurdek, 1978; Qureshi et al, 2010). This is important in daily social interactions (Ku et al, 2015; Todd et al, 2015), and is helpful for establishing better social relations, reducing stereotypes of others (Ku et al, 2010; Laurent and Myers, 2011), and improving one’s ability to empathize (Batson et al, 2007)

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Results

Conclusion