Effects Of Suppression Gestures On Emotion Regulation:Evidence From ERPs

The ability to cope adaptively with negative emotional events by volitionally altering one's emotional reactions is important for psychological and physical health as well as social interaction.Emotion regulation refers to the processes by which the individual influence emotional generation ? appraisal and expression.Emotional regulation may comprehend and modulate emotion efficiently.Previous studies have shown that the expression suppression strategy can reduce the negative emotional experience of individuals effectively.However,the manipulation of this strategy is usually in the form of verbal or written commands,which can cause anxiety,depression and other uncomfortable peripheral physiological responses.Based on the theory of embodied emotions,When we expressing emotions,we often used gesture unconsciousness.Recent studies have shown that the simulation of physical activity and the approach of physical experience can regulate negative emotions effectively,but only small number of studies have focused on physical activity such as gestures on emotional regulation in this field.In this study we explored the effect of inhibitive gestures on emotional regulation and its brain mechanism,so as to verify theeffectiveness of inhibitive gestures as a strategy of embodied emotion regulation.The experiment used event-related potentials(ERPs)technique to select negative emotional faces(fear,anger,sadness)and neutral faces as experimental materials.The experiment was designed in the subjects which divided into three Blocks.Block1 free viewing stage: In this part,we allowing participants to watch neutral and negative face images randomly.Block2: First,showing suppression gesture to participants who were asked to use this strategy to view negative face pictures.Block3 Expression suppression stage: Participants were asked to use this strategy to view negative face pictures.In this stage,participants were given a sentence "Don't show any feelings",and then the participants were asked to use this strategy to negative face pictures.All three Blocks record EEG data during the experiment.The present study did not counterbalance the free viewing and expressive suppression conditions,but in text or gesture suppression conditions were between-subjects balance.In oder to compare text suppression and gesture suppression emotional regulation strategies,We text three ERP components.In free viewing stage: the EPN amplitude was more negative than neutral,and the LPP amplitude of negative faces was significantly larger than neutral faces.With suppression emotion regulation strategy: Using text suppression strategy's LPP was significantly smaller than that under thegesture suppression condition under the early and middle time windows,while from the middle to the late time windows,using gesture suppression's LPP was significantly smaller than text suppression condition.To sum up,this study proved that gesture suppression can regulate negative emotions.The time process of two emotion regulation strategies was different: in the early stage of emotion regulation,text suppression was better than gesture suppression.From middle to late stage of emotion regulation,gesture suppression was better than that text suppression.In other words,compared with this two strategies,gesture suppression appeared later and was more stable.