High emotion-control value reduces error-detection impairment following emotion suppression: an event-related potential study.

The present study investigated whether individuals characterized by different emotion-control values (ECV) differed in their cognitive effort after being required to suppress emotions. Emotions of sadness were induced using a video clip and individuals were instructed to suppress their emotional expression. Behavioral measures of an event-related potentials related to Stroop task performance following suppression were obtained. Results show that whereas suppression led to attenuated error or conflict monitoring in low-ECV participants, as indicated by significantly lower error-related negativity amplitudes compared with ECV-matched controls, participants high in ECV did not differ from the controls. Emotion suppression in high-ECV individuals seems to come at a much lower cost and to be more effective in lowering both arousal and sadness than in low-ECV individuals.