Cardiac vagal control predicts spontaneous regulation of negative emotional expression and subsequent cognitive performance

Pu, Jie; Schmeichel, Brandon J.; Demaree, Heath A.

doi:10.1016/j.biopsycho.2009.07.006

Cited by 79 publications

(74 citation statements)

References 62 publications

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“…High vagal activity has been linked to successfully coping with stressful or unpleasant situations [19,[30][31][32] and results in successful emotional and cognitive regulation [33]. These results show that there was more emotional regulation when participants had to decide on the intensity level and to execute the action.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 61%

Responsibility and the sense of agency enhance empathy for pain

2015

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Being held responsible for our actions strongly determines our moral judgements and decisions. This study examined whether responsibility also influences our affective reaction to others' emotions. We conducted two experiments in order to assess the effect of responsibility and of a sense of agency (the conscious feeling of controlling an action) on the empathic response to pain. In both experiments, participants were presented with video clips showing an actor's facial expression of pain of varying intensity. The empathic response was assessed with behavioural ( pain intensity estimation from facial expressions and unpleasantness for the observer ratings) and electrophysiological measures (facial electromyography). Experiment 1 showed enhanced empathic response (increased unpleasantness for the observer and facial electromyography responses) as participants' degree of responsibility for the actor's pain increased. This effect was mainly accounted for by the decisional component of responsibility (compared with the execution component). In addition, experiment 2 found that participants' unpleasantness rating also increased when they had a sense of agency over the pain, while controlling for decision and execution processes. The findings suggest that increased empathy induced by responsibility and a sense of agency may play a role in regulating our moral conduct.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 61%

Responsibility and the sense of agency enhance empathy for pain

2015

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“…Consistent with these models of parasympathetic influences on self-regulation and emotional and social functioning, lower tonic or resting HF-HRV is associated with negative affect and use of maladaptive coping strategies (Fabes & Eisenberg, 1997;Gyurak & Ayduk, 2008), negative emotional traits such as depression and anxiety (Thayer & Brosschot, 2005), reduced regulation of negative affect (Pu, Schmeichel, & Demaree, 2009), insecurity in romantic relationships (Diamond & Hicks, 2005), social isolation (Horsten et al, 1999), and antagonistic personality traits (Demaree & Everhart, 2004;Sloan et al, 1994). However, other research has found that stress-related decreases in HF-HRV, but not tonic levels, are associated with the quality of social relationships (Egizio et al, 2008).…”

Section: Heart Rate Variability As An Index Of Self-regulation: Capacmentioning

confidence: 81%

Matters of the variable heart: Respiratory sinus arrhythmia response to marital interaction and associations with marital quality.

Smith

Cribbet

Nealey-Moore

et al. 2011

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

178

146

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Maintenance of relationship quality requires self-regulation of emotion and social behavior, and women often display greater effort in this regard than do men. Furthermore, such efforts can deplete the limited capacity for self-regulation. In recent models of self-regulation, resting level of respiratory sinus arrhythmia, quantified as high-frequency heart rate variability (HF-HRV), is an indicator of selfregulatory capacity, whereas transient increases in HF-HRV reflect self-regulatory effort. To test these hypotheses in marriage, 114 young couples completed measures of marital quality and a positive, neutral, or negative initial marital task, preceded and followed by resting baseline assessments of HF-HRV. Couples then discussed a current marital disagreement. Resting HF-HRV was correlated with marital quality, suggesting that capacity for self-regulation is associated with adaptive functioning in close relationships. For women but not men, the negative initial task produced a decrease in resting HF-HRV. This effect was mediated by the husbands' negative affect response to the task and their ratings of wives as controlling and directive. When the subsequent disagreement discussion followed the negative initial task, women displayed increased HF-HRV during the discussion but a decrease when it followed the neutral or positive task. The valence of the initial task had no effect on men's HF-HRV during disagreement. Negative marital interactions can reduce women's resting HF-HRV, with potentially adverse health consequences. Women's reduced health benefit from marriage might reflect the depleting effects on self-regulatory capacity of their greater efforts to manage relationship quality.

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“…Beauchaine et al, 2007). It has been used as a framework to investigate emotion regulation problems in conduct disordered children (Beauchaine et al, 2007;Hastings et al, 2008) and has been shown to predict spontaneous regulation of negative emotional expression in healthy adults (Pu et al, 2009). This would require measuring respiratory sinus arrhythmia (the natural variation in heart rate occurring during the breathing cycle) in psychopathy during emotion regulation tasks of the sort used here and would be one useful way to validate and extend the present work.…”

Section: Article In Pressmentioning

confidence: 99%