Whose emotion is it? Measuring self-other discrimination in romantic relationships during an emotional evaluation paradigm

Abstract

In healthy subjects, emotional stimuli, positive stimuli in particular, are processed in a facilitated manner as are stimuli related to the self. These preferential processing biases also seem to hold true for self-related positive stimuli when compared to self-related negative or other-related positive stimuli suggesting a self-positivity bias in affective processing. The present study investigates the stability of this self-positivity bias and its possible extension to the emotional other in a sample of N = 147 participants including single participants (n = 61) and individuals currently in a romantic relationship (n = 86) reporting moderate to high levels of passionate love. Participants were presented a series of emotional and neutral words that could be related to the reader’s self (e.g., “my pleasure”, “my fear”), or to an insignificant third person, unknown to the reader (e.g., “his pleasure”, “his fear”) or devoid of any person reference (e.g., “the pleasure”, “the fear”). The task was to read the words silently and to evaluate the word pairs in reference to one’s own feelings elicited during reading. Results showed a self-positivity bias in emotional judgments in all participants, particularly in men. Moreover, participants in a romantic relationship (women and men) evaluated positive, other-related stimuli more often as valence-congruent with one’s own feelings than single participants. Taken together, these findings support the idea of a self-positivity bias in healthy subjects and an expansion of this bias while being in a romantic relationship.

My Sadness – Our Happiness: Writing About Positive, Negative, and Neutral Autobiographical Life Events Reveals Linguistic Markers of Self-Positivity and Individual Well-Being

“…Hence, healthy participants seem to spontaneously associate negative autobiographical events more strongly with the individual self (“I”, “Me”) and may extend positive events from the individual to the social self (“We”). Several studies and theoretical research (Brewer and Gardner, 1996) could already demonstrate that individuals broaden their self-focus to significant and close others under certain conditions such as when experiencing positive events or wins that can be shared with others (e.g., Chung and Pennebaker, 2008) or when passionately in love (e.g., Aron and Aron, 1986; Meixner and Herbert, 2018). In addition, some studies suggest that this broadening of one’s self-focus can be associated with an increase in the use of first person personal pronouns [Pennebaker and Chung (2007) for an overview].…”

Emotion and conflict adaptation: the role of phasic arousal and self-relevance

“…Both questionnaires were added for a student project. Following a reviewer's suggestion, we performed an exploratory analysis that correlated the Empathy Quotient with the effect of self-relevance on the interaction of previous emotion and conflict adaptation (Herbert, Sfärlea, & Blumenthal, 2013;Meixner & Herbert, 2018). No significant effect was observed (r = -.077; p = .580).…”

Affective Language, Interpretation Bias and Its Molecular Genetic Variations: Exploring the Relationship Between Genetic Variations of the OXTR Gene (rs53576 and rs2268498) and the Emotional Evaluation of Words Related to the Self or the Other

“…In other words, when healthy participants are presented a series of emotional and neutral words that are related either to their own self or the self of another person and asked to judge these words in terms of their emotional valence and concomitant feelings, they judge positive words more often as positive and thus as valence-congruent when related to the self as compared to when related to another person. Moreover, they are faster in this decision than in their decisions to self-related neutral or negative words (e.g., Weis and Herbert, 2017; Meixner and Herbert, 2018). Although quite robust, this self-positivity bias can be subject to inter- and intraindividual variations: it can be significantly extended from the first person to the third person in individuals experiencing a romantic relationship (e.g., Meixner and Herbert, 2018; Quintard et al, 2018), whereas in participants with mental disorders, this self-positivity bias may be significantly attenuated, absent or even changed towards a negativity bias (Herbert et al, 2014, 2018b; Winter et al, 2015, 2018).…”

“…Moreover, they are faster in this decision than in their decisions to self-related neutral or negative words (e.g., Weis and Herbert, 2017; Meixner and Herbert, 2018). Although quite robust, this self-positivity bias can be subject to inter- and intraindividual variations: it can be significantly extended from the first person to the third person in individuals experiencing a romantic relationship (e.g., Meixner and Herbert, 2018; Quintard et al, 2018), whereas in participants with mental disorders, this self-positivity bias may be significantly attenuated, absent or even changed towards a negativity bias (Herbert et al, 2014, 2018b; Winter et al, 2015, 2018). So far, however, one can only speculate how variations in OXTR genotypes might influence these interpretation biases.…”

“…These observations are well in line with the well-known self-reference effect (Symons and Johnson, 1997) and the observation of self-serving attributional biases in affective processing (Mezulis et al, 2004). Interestingly, when words possess both emotional content and self-reference, processing of self-related emotional words reveals a self-positivity bias on a behavioral and a neural processing level (Fossati et al, 2003; Herbert et al, 2011a; Fields and Kuperberg, 2016; Weis and Herbert, 2017; Meixner and Herbert, 2018). This suggests that the combination between positive emotional valence and self-reference significantly increases the personal relevance of the meaning of a stimulus and consequently enhances the reaction towards it.…”