Emotion

Stellar, Jennifer E.; John-Henderson, Neha; Anderson, Craig L.; Gordon, Amie M.; McNeil, Galen D.; Keltner, Dacher

doi: 10.1037/emo0000033pmid: 25603133

Negative emotions are reliably associated with poorer health (e.g., Kiecolt-Glaser, McGuire, Robles, & Glaser, 2002), but only recently has research begun to acknowledge the important role of positive emotions for our physical health (Fredrickson, 2003). We examine the link between dispositional positive affect and one potential biological pathway between positive emotions and health—proinflammatory cytokines, specifically levels of interleukin-6 (IL-6). We hypothesized that greater trait positive affect would be associated with lower levels of IL-6 in a healthy sample. We found support for this hypothesis across two studies. We also explored the relationship between discrete positive emotions and IL-6 levels, finding that awe, measured in two different ways, was the strongest predictor of lower levels of proinflammatory cytokines. These effects held when controlling for relevant personality and health variables. This work suggests a potential biological pathway between positive emotions and health through proinflammatory cytokines.

Jia, Lile; Lee, Li Neng; Tong, Eddie Mun Wai

doi: 10.1037/emo0000022pmid: 25286071

Recent theorists argue that gratitude, besides encouraging social exchange, serves an important function of relationship building. However, there is a lack of research exploring the specific behaviors through which gratitude promotes relationship building. Given that behavioral mimicry serves important affiliative needs, we explored whether gratitude promotes behavioral mimicry. We found that participants who received intentional help later mimicked the behavioral mannerisms of their benefactor. This mimicry tendency was not extended to a nonbenefactor. In contrast, participants who ended up with the same positive outcome, but believed that it was attributable to chance, did not exhibit a reliable level of mimicry. Our results suggest that nonconscious behavioral mimicry might be a subtle but important first step through which gratitude promotes communal relationships.

Hay, Aleena C.; Sheppes, Gal; Gross, James J.; Gruber, June

doi: 10.1037/emo0000024pmid: 25313669

Individuals with bipolar disorder experience emotion regulation difficulties, even during remission, but are able to effectively employ emotion regulation strategies when instructed. We hypothesized that this puzzling discrepancy might be due to their maladaptive emotion regulation choices. To test this hypothesis, we used a previously validated paradigm (Sheppes, Scheibe, Suri, & Gross, 2011; Sheppes et al., 2014), and asked remitted individuals with bipolar I disorder (n = 25) and healthy individuals (n = 26) to view standardized positive and negative images of high and low intensity, and choose reappraisal or distraction to decrease their emotion intensity. Replicating and extending prior results, participants across both groups showed a pattern of choosing distraction more for high versus low intensity positive and negative images, but no between-groups differences were evident. These results suggest that emotion regulation choice patterns may be robust across samples, and add to growing evidence that several basic emotion regulation elements may remain intact in bipolar disorder.

Crowell, Adrienne; Page-Gould, Elizabeth; Schmeichel, Brandon J.

doi: 10.1037/emo0000030pmid: 25603136

Reflecting on core personal values is a common means of self-affirmation that can change how a person responds to threatening events. Specifically, self-affirmation has been found to reduce psychological defenses against self-esteem threats. The current research examined the effects of self-affirmation on more basic reflexive mechanisms of motivation and emotion. The startle-eyeblink response is a defensive reflex that can be elicited by loud bursts of noise and is potentiated in the presence of threatening stimuli. Individual differences in anxiety-related traits, including behavioral inhibition-system (BIS) sensitivity, predict the magnitude of threat-potentiated startle responses, such that higher BIS sensitivity corresponds with more intense responses to threatening stimuli. The current experiment (N = 100) tested the hypothesis that affirming a core personal value breaks the link between BIS sensitivity and threat responsiveness. We measured individual differences in BIS, manipulated the opportunity for self-affirmation, and assessed eyeblink responses to startle probes during negative, neutral, and positive emotional picture viewing. In the no-affirmation condition, BIS sensitivity predicted the magnitude of startle-eyeblink responses during negative pictures, consistent with previous research. In the self-affirmation condition, the relationship between BIS sensitivity and threat-potentiated startle responding was eliminated. This finding suggests that self-affirmation’s effects extend beyond self-esteem defenses to influence basic defensive reflexes in threat-prone individuals.

Isaacowitz, Derek M.; Livingstone, Kimberly M.; Harris, Julia A.; Marcotte, Stacy L.

doi: 10.1037/emo0000037pmid: 25527965

Two studies are reported representing the first use of mobile eye tracking to study emotion regulation across adulthood. Past research on age differences in attentional deployment using stationary eye tracking has revealed older adults show relatively more positive looking and seem to benefit more moodwise from this looking pattern, compared with younger adults. However, these past studies have greatly constrained the stimuli participants can look at, despite real-world settings providing numerous possibilities for what we choose to look at. The authors therefore used mobile eye tracking to study age differences in attentional selection, as indicated by fixation patterns to stimuli of different valence freely chosen by the participant. In contrast to stationary eye-tracking studies of attentional deployment, Study 1 showed that younger and older individuals generally selected similar proportions of valenced stimuli, and attentional selection had similar effects on mood across age groups. Study 2 replicated this pattern with an adult life span sample including middle-aged individuals. Emotion regulation-relevant attention may thus differ depending on whether stimuli are freely chosen or not.

Morillas-Romero, Alfonso; Tortella-Feliu, Miquel; Balle, Maria; Bornas, Xavier

doi: 10.1037/emo0000016pmid: 25151518

The current study aimed to explore whether self-reported attentional control (AC) and the attentional network functioning would predict spontaneous emotion downregulation after emotional induction. A total of 117 healthy volunteers were asked to continuously rate their discomfort while looking at affective pictures, as well as for a period of time after exposure. After controlling for trait anxiety, higher self-reported AC significantly predicted a greater spontaneous emotional downregulation after exposure to aversive pictures. Both higher self-reported AC and lower executive control network functioning (i.e., greater interference) predicted a faster spontaneous emotional downregulation after exposure to affectively neutral pictures. Results are discussed focusing on the relationship between AC and emotion regulation difficulties.

DeSteno, David

doi: 10.1037/emo0000064pmid: 25821908

Payne, Jessica D.; Kensinger, Elizabeth A.; Wamsley, Erin J.; Spreng, R. Nathan; Alger, Sara E.; Gibler, Kyle; Schacter, Daniel L.; Stickgold, Robert

doi: 10.1037/a0038683pmid: 25706830

After information is encoded into memory, it undergoes an offline period of consolidation that occurs optimally during sleep. The consolidation process not only solidifies memories, but also selectively preserves aspects of experience that are emotionally salient and relevant for future use. Here, we provide evidence that an afternoon nap is sufficient to trigger preferential memory for emotional information contained in complex scenes. Selective memory for negative emotional information was enhanced after a nap compared with wakefulness in 2 control conditions designed to carefully address interference and time-of-day confounds. Although prior evidence has connected negative emotional memory formation to REM sleep physiology, we found that non-REM delta activity and the amount of slow wave sleep (SWS) in the nap were robustly related to the selective consolidation of negative information. These findings suggest that the mechanisms underlying memory consolidation benefits associated with napping and nighttime sleep are not always the same. Finally, we provide preliminary evidence that the magnitude of the emotional memory benefit conferred by sleep is equivalent following a nap and a full night of sleep, suggesting that selective emotional remembering can be economically achieved by taking a nap.

Lebowitz, Matthew S.; Dovidio, John F.

doi: 10.1037/a0038820pmid: 25706828

Empathic concern—a sense of caring and compassion in response to the needs of others—is a type of emotional response to the plights and misfortunes of others that predicts positive social attitudes and altruistic interpersonal behaviors. One psychological process that has been posited to facilitate empathic concern is the ability to regulate one’s own emotions. However, existing research links some emotion-regulation approaches (e.g., suppression) to social outcomes that would appear at odds with empathic concern, such as decreased interpersonal closeness. In the present research, we tested whether relying on suppression to regulate one’s emotions would lead to decreases in empathic concern—and related downstream variables, such as negative social attitudes and unwillingness to engage in altruistic behavior—when learning about another person’s misfortune. In Study 1, dispositional and instructionally induced suppression was negatively associated with empathic concern, which led to increased stigmatizing attitudes. By contrast, instructing participants to use another emotion-regulation strategy examined for comparison—reappraisal—did not decrease empathic concern, and dispositional reliance on reappraisal was actually positively associated with empathic concern. In Study 2, the findings of Study 1 regarding the effects of habitual use of reappraisal and suppression were replicated, and reliance on suppression was also found to be associated with reluctance to engage in helping behaviors. These findings are situated within the existing literature and employed to shed new light on the interpersonal consequences of intrapersonal emotion-regulation strategies.

Davies, Carolyn D.; Craske, Michelle G.

doi: 10.1037/emo0000038pmid: 25603130

Although threat unpredictability plays an important role in determining emotional responses, little is known about what elements of unpredictability are responsible for these results. The current study examined the single and combined effects of two elements of unpredictable threat: (a) uncertainty about the timing of an aversive event (temporal unpredictability), and (b) uncertainty about whether an aversive event will occur at all (cue unpredictability). Seventy-two healthy young adult participants were randomly assigned to receive either temporally predictable or unpredictable shocks at varying levels of cue unpredictability. Dependent variables included skin conductance responses (SCRs) and eyeblink startle reflex. Combined cue and temporal unpredictability elicited weaker SCRs than either element of unpredictability alone, indicating that high unpredictability may induce anxiety-like physiological inhibition. Combined cue and temporal unpredictability and combined cue and temporal predictability produced the largest startle. Findings provide evidence that both cue and temporal unpredictability should be included in human models of anxiety.