Distraction And Expressive Suppression Strategies In Regulation Of Different-Intensities Emotions

Process-specific timing hypothesis extends the process model of emotion regulation and adds three important factors(cognitive resources,emotion intensity and regulatory goals)to predict the effectiveness of regulation strategies.Although emotional-intensity is a core factor that affects the effectiveness of emotion regulation,its role remains largely unexplored in affective-neuroscience.Therefore,the current study compared the effectiveness of distraction and expressive suppression strategies in regulation of highand low-intensity stimuli by using event-related potentials(ERPs).In the first study,sixteen college students completed a negative emotion regulation experiment in which they passively viewed high-or low-intensity unpleasant images(view),solved a mathematical equation presented on high-or low-intensity negative pictures(distraction),or suppressed their emotional expression to high-or low-intensity unpleasant pictures(expressive suppression),and negative experience after implementation of the strategies was rated by participants themselves on a 1–9 scale.Behaviorally,we found that relative to view,distraction successfully reduced high-intensity negative emotion rating scores.ERP results showed that both distraction and expressive suppression affected emotional responding during the early phase of late positive potential(LPP)window,more importantly,compared with expressive suppression,distraction yielded greater attenuation of the early phase of LPP when the participants were in response to high-intensity negative pictures.In low-intensity condition,distraction but not expressive suppression effectively decreased the early phase of LPP.In the second study,sixteen college students completed a positive emotion regulation experiment in which they employed distraction or expressive suppression strategies or passively viewed to complete the positive emotion regulation tasks,and positive experience after implementation of the strategies was rated by participants themselves on a 1–9 scale.Behavioral results showed that both distraction and expressive suppression strategy reduced high-intensity and low-intensity emotional rating scores.ERP results showed that both distraction and expressive suppression affected emotional responding induced by high-intensity positive emotional pictures during the early LPP window,and they do not have significant differences between them.However,distraction strategy but not expressive suppression strategy yielded greater attenuation of the late phase of LPP.Distraction and expressive suppression failed to reduce the amplitudes of LPP induced by low-intensity positive emotional pictures.In study 2,expressive suppression is effective in high-intensity emotion,and affects the emotional responding from the early stage;distraction strategy compared with expressive suppression reduced negative emotion ratings and LPP amplitude induced by negative stimuli,which reveals that distraction strategy is superior to expressive suppression strategy.