Cognitive emotion regulation and personality: an analysis of individual differences in the neural and behavioral correlates of successful reappraisal

Abstract

A common and mostly effective emotion regulation strategy is reappraisal. During reappraisal, activity in cognitive control brain regions increases and activity in brain regions associated with emotion responding (e.g., the amygdala) diminishes. Immediately after reappraisal, it has been observed that activity in the amygdala increases again, which might reflect a paradoxical aftereffect. While there is extensive empirical evidence for these neural correlates of emotion regulation, only few studies targeted the association with individual differences in personality traits. The aim of this study is to investigate these associations more thoroughly. Seventy-six healthy participants completed measures of broad personality traits (Big Five, Positive and Negative Affect) as well as of more narrow traits (habitual use of emotion regulation) and performed an experimental fMRI reappraisal task. Participants were instructed to either permit their emotions or to detach themselves from the presented negative and neutral pictures. After each picture, a relaxation period was included. Reappraisal success was determined by arousal ratings and activity in the amygdala. During reappraisal, we found activation in the prefrontal cortex and deactivation in the left amygdala. During the relaxation period, an immediate aftereffect was found in occipital regions and marginally in the amygdala. Neither personality traits nor habitual use of emotion regulation predicted reappraisal success or the magnitude of the aftereffect. We replicated typical activation and deactivation patterns during intentional emotion regulation and partially replicated the immediate aftereffect in the amygdala. However, there was no association between personality traits and emotion regulation success.

Resting state cortico-limbic functional connectivity and dispositional use of emotion regulation strategies: A replication and extension study

“…This could have led to a failed activation of brain regions related to emotional processing during the negative stimulation period and, subsequently, to difficulties in detecting a reappraisal success. However, analyses of brain activation during reappraisal of negative pictures as compared to viewing negative pictures revealed downregulation of amygdala activation as well as activation in prefrontal regions in a previous analysis of the same data (Scheffel et al, 2019) replicating earlier findings (Buhle et al, 2014;Dörfel et al, 2014;Paschke et al, 2016;Walter et al, 2009).…”

“…Pictures were taken from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS, Lang, Bradley, & Cuthbert, 2008) The ER tasks differed slightly across the three experiments. However, all had in common that participants went through a Permit and a Detach condition (Diers et al, in preparation;Diers et al, 2014;Gärtner et al, 2019;Scheffel et al, 2019). During the Permit condition, participants should take a close look at the pictures and permit any emotions, that might arise.…”

“…Stimuli were presented using Presentation (Neurobehavioral Systems, Albany, CA, USA). For each subject, anatomical (T1-weighted) images were acquired using an MPRAGE sequence consisting of 176 sagittal slices with a thickness of 1 mm (TR: 1900 ms, TE: 2.26 ms, flip angle 9°, FOV: 256 × 256 mm², matrix size 256 × 256, voxel size: 1 × 1 × 1 mm³) (Diers et al, 2014;Gärtner et al, 2019;Scheffel et al, 2019). Figure 1A).…”

“…Therefore, the implementation of the instructed ER strategies in the experiment was successful (cf. Scheffel et al, 2019).…”

“…The present study specifically pursued three objectives: 1) We aimed at an investigation whether individual differences in dispositional reappraisal and expressive suppression (defined by self-reported habitual use as measured with the ERQ) can explain variance in rsFC between amygdala and PFC. To do so, we reanalyzed own existing data (Diers, Weber, Brocke, Strobel, & Schonfeld, 2014;Scheffel et al, 2019) from three related ER experiments containing measures of dispositional use of reappraisal and suppression (via ERQ) and fMRI resting state scans in order to replicate the findings by Picó-Pérez et al (2018). We aimed at a direct replication according to the definition outlined above.…”