Cognitive reappraisal during unpleasant picture processing: Subjective self‐report and peripheral physiology

Abstract

Increased attention among the research community in exploring underlying mechanisms of emotion regulation has prompted a growth of experimental works in this field. Empirical studies have mainly focused on self‐reports, brain imaging, and electrophysiological measures, with only a few works exploring peripheral physiology. Additionally, most of such studies have not considered the specific stimuli content, even though prior literature has shown relevant differences in psychophysiological and subjective responses depending on picture categories. The current study assessed several peripheral correlates (startle amplitude, electrodermal changes, heart rate) of emotion regulation processes in a sample of 122 healthy participants. The task consisted of voluntary reappraisal of negative emotions prompted by unpleasant pictures (threat to others and victims), compared to a nonregulation control condition (looking at exemplars of the same categories and household objects). Results showed an effect of emotion regulation instructions in all psychophysiological and subjective measures. In peripheral physiology, greater responses were observed specifically when increasing negative emotions, concurring with previous research. Regarding specific content, our findings evidence a similar emotion regulation pattern, independently of the unpleasant category, suggesting a plausible effect of cognitive variables (such as cognitive effort) during voluntary reappraisal for both categories.

Emotion elicitation during music listening: Subjective self‐reports, facial expression, and autonomic reactivity

“…These findings support the idea that an intermediate duration (between 6 and 8 s) could prompt relatively stable and significant physiological changes, as has been found with other modalities of affective stimuli. As a consequence, the FMMS excerpts selected in the present study were previously edited by shortening them to 8 s in order to ensure a similar trial duration within the task, being therefore comparable to prior music studies (Gringas et al, 2015;Khalfa et al, 2002), as well as other works using emotional pictures or sounds in diverse paradigms such as passive viewing, aversive conditioning, or cognitive reappraisal tasks (Conzelmann et al, 2015;Fuentes-Sánchez et al, 2019;López et al, 2009). Thus, the first objective was to investigate the correspondence between the subjective ratings obtained in the a priori validation study-with longer and variable excerpts durations (Fuentes-Sánchez et al, 2020)-and those obtained here for the shortened excerpts.…”

Spanish adaptation of a film music stimulus set (FMSS): Cultural and gender differences in the perception of emotions prompted by music excerpts

“…In laboratory contexts, different affective stimuli, such as pictures (International Affective Picture System [IAPS]; Lang, Bradley, & Cuthbert, 1999), sounds (International Affective Digitized Sounds [IADS]; Bradley & Lang, 2007), words (Affective Norms for English words [ANEW]; Bradley & Lang, 2017), and facial expressions (Ekman & Friesen, 1976) have been used as reliable tools to induce emotions. All of these stimuli are generally part of standardized datasets that provide normative values in different affective dimensions (e.g., hedonic valence and arousal), and have been used in numerous experimental procedures, including passive exposure to affective stimuli (Bradley, Codispoti, Cuthbert, & Lang, 2001; Ciuffini, Stratta, & Marrelli, 2018), emotional anticipation (Sege, Bradley, & Lang, 2014), and emotion regulation (Bernat, Cadwallader, Seo, Vizueta, & Patrick, 2011; Conzelmann, McGregor, & Pauli, 2015; Fuentes-Sánchez, Jaén, Escrig, Lucas, & Pastor, 2019). The use of these stimuli has been essential in the study of brain function (Bermpohl et al, 2006; Ozawa, Kanayama, & Hiraki, 2019), peripheral psychophysiological correlates (Gomez, von Gunten, & Danuser, 2016), as well as subjective evaluations (Bradley, Codispoti, Cuthbert, & Lang, 2001) that are part of emotional reactions.…”

Emotion regulation and peripheral psychophysiological correlates in the management of induced pain: A systematic review

“…In this regard, both reappraisal and acceptance have been shown to be effective in decreasing electrodermal activity and heart rate responses [27,32,33]. Likewise, reappraisal has also been associated with diminished defensive responses such as the startle reflex [32,34], although the literature shows a lack of agreement in the results [35][36][37][38][39]. Regarding behavioral responses, studies have reported that corrugator activity decreases when participants use reappraisal or acceptance strategies [28].…”