Laboratory of Psychological Medicine, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium.
Psychiatry Res. 2012 May 15;197(1-2):145-53. doi: 10.1016/j.psychres.2011.12.026. Epub 2012 Mar 5.
Several studies have suggested that women are more sensitive than men to emotions in general. Event-related potential (ERP) studies have demonstrated N2 and P3b modulations, suggesting that women allocate more attentional resources to emotions than men do. However, the exact origin of this emotional modulation by sex is still a matter of debate. We wondered whether these sex differences might be due to some specific personality traits of women and men. Thirty participants (15 males and 15 females) were selected so that there were no sex differences on alexithymia, or depression and anxiety scales. The participants were asked to complete a "modified emotional" oddball task, in which they had to detect deviant stimuli among frequent neutral ones as quickly as possible. Behavioral performance, N2 and P3b ERP data were analyzed. When personality factors were controlled for, the sex differences on N2 and P3b components of the ERPs disappeared. Moreover, linear regression analyses showed that alexithymia was much better than sex at predicting the N2 latencies, while depression was the best factor for predicting the P3b latency. These results suggest that personality factors should be taken into account when sex differences on emotional processing are investigated.
几项研究表明，女性通常比男性对情绪更敏感。事件相关电位（ERP）研究表明 N2 和 P3b 的调制，表明女性比男性分配更多的注意力资源到情绪上。然而，这种性别引起的情绪调制的确切起源仍然存在争议。我们想知道这些性别差异是否可能归因于女性和男性的某些特定人格特质。选择了 30 名参与者（15 名男性和 15 名女性），使得在述情障碍、抑郁和焦虑量表上没有性别差异。要求参与者完成一项“改良的情绪”Oddball 任务，他们必须尽快检测到在频繁的中性刺激中出现的偏差刺激。分析了行为表现、N2 和 P3b 的 ERP 数据。当控制人格因素时，ERP 的 N2 和 P3b 成分上的性别差异消失了。此外，线性回归分析表明，在预测 N2 潜伏期时，述情障碍比性别更好，而抑郁是预测 P3b 潜伏期的最佳因素。这些结果表明，在研究情绪处理中的性别差异时，应该考虑人格因素。
