Acute stress improves the effectivity of cognitive emotion regulation in men

Abstract

Emotion regulation is crucial for coping with stressors but in turn can also be influenced by stress. Initial studies provided mixed evidence showing either beneficial or impairing stress effects on cognitive emotion regulation depending on stress timing, sex or the regulatory strategy. Here, we investigated the impact of acute stress on different emotion regulation strategies in men and women. N = 118 healthy participants were subjected to the Trier Social Stress Test or a control condition after which they completed an emotion regulation paradigm, requiring them to regulate their emotions in response to negative pictures using reappraisal or distraction. Cortisol levels were repeatedly measured to quantify changes in HPA axis activity. Affective ratings and pupil dilation served to measure emotion regulation success and the cognitive effort to regulate emotions. Stress reduced arousal and increased valence and success ratings for reappraisal in men, whereas no significant stress effects were found in women. Moreover, stressed men displayed a significant expansion of pupil diameter during reappraisal suggesting enhanced cognitive regulatory engagement, which ultimately may have led to better emotion regulation outcomes. Cortisol secretion positively correlated with subjective reappraisal success in men, suggesting a glucocorticoid-driven mechanism that may promote emotion regulatory performance in the aftermath of stress.

Effects of gender and personality on everyday moral decision-making after acute stress exposure

“…Third, for future studies it would be interesting to systematically investigate the hypothesis that stress might increase altruistic decision-making through a mechanism of emotion regulation with prosocial behavior as an opportunity to enhance negative mood induced by the TSST (Singer et al, 2017;Sollberger et al, 2016). Potentially, different emotion regulation strategies might play a role at different time points after acute stress exposure, since Langer et al (2020) reported that acute stress improved the effectivity of the cognitive emotion regulation strategy reappraisal in men at +15 min after TSST offset.…”

A dynamic causal model on self-regulation of aversive emotion

“…Emotions are generally recognized as responses generated by the human organism, which are essential for the adaptation to changing environmental demands [1][2][3]. Considering the significance, plenty of studies have been yielded in the recent years, focusing on emotional responses or experiences with the help of fMRI [4][5][6].…”

The Relationship Between Perceived Control and Hypothalamic–Pituitary–Adrenal Axis Reactivity to the Trier Social Stress Test in Healthy Young Adults

“…The visual analog scale for perceived control (PC) and the PANAS were immediately completed. Further, as previous studies have reported that the peak salivary cortisol levels would appear around 10-20 min after cessation of the TSST (Kirschbaum et al, 1993;Langer et al, 2020;Keenan et al, 2021; for a review, see Kudielka et al, 2007), saliva samples were collected four times at 0, 20, 45, and 60 min after the TSST as referred to measurement settings of previous studies using the TSST as the acute stressor (Johnson et al, 2019;Schmalbach et al, 2020; Figure 1).…”