Department of Psychology, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
Biol Psychol. 2013 Sep;94(1):136-42. doi: 10.1016/j.biopsycho.2013.05.019. Epub 2013 Jun 5.
Distraction and cognitive reappraisal influence the emotion-generative process at early stages and have been shown to effectively attenuate emotional responding. Inhibiting emotion-expressive behavior is thought to be less beneficial due to later implementation, but empirical results are mixed. Thus, the current study examined the temporal dynamics of these emotion regulation strategies at attenuating the late positive potential (LPP) while participants were shown unpleasant pictures. Results revealed that all strategies successfully reduced the LPP and self-reported negative affect. We confirmed that distraction attenuated the LPP earlier than cognitive reappraisal. Surprisingly, expressive suppression affected emotional responding as early as distraction. This suggests that suppression was used preventively and disrupted the emotion-generative process from the very beginning instead of targeting the emotional response itself. Thus, the obtained results point to the importance of considering the point in time when response-focused emotion regulation strategies are being implemented.
分心和认知重评会影响情绪产生过程的早期阶段，并已被证明可以有效地减轻情绪反应。由于抑制情绪表达行为是在后期实施的，因此被认为不太有益，但实证结果却存在差异。因此，本研究在向参与者展示不愉快的图片时，考察了这些情绪调节策略在减轻晚期正波（LPP）方面的时间动态。结果表明，所有策略都成功地降低了 LPP 和自我报告的负面情绪。我们证实分心比认知重评更早地减轻了 LPP。令人惊讶的是，表达抑制对情绪反应的影响与分心一样早。这表明抑制是预防性的，它从一开始就破坏了情绪产生过程，而不是针对情绪反应本身。因此，所得结果表明，在实施以反应为中心的情绪调节策略时，考虑实施的时间点非常重要。
