Sex Differences In Emotional Reactivity And Automatic Emotion Regulation

In the field of emotion,gender differences in emotional responses have been studied for a long time.Unfortunately,no consensus has been reached on gender differences in emotional responses in the laboratory.In addition,the research shows that sex differences in emotional reactivity may be affected by social-culture factors.Considering that gender roles are also gradually formed in the process of socialization,we try to use gender role factor to explain the inconsistencies in previous research results.Androgyny is a kind of special group which possess masculine and feminine temperament at the same time.In the first study,using the Sex Role Inventory for College Students(CSRI),we recruited 68 subjects and divided into four groups: typical male(masculine male),typical female(feminine female),androgynous male and androgynous female.We asked four groups of subjects to passively watch neutral and negative pictures,and simultaneously collected behavioral and electrophysiological data.Behavioral data showed that,the reported subjective emotional experience scores of typical female were significantly higher than that of typical male,but there was no significant difference between the reported subjective emotional experience scores of androgynous male and that of androgynous female.Electrophysiologically,we found higher late positive potential(LPP)amplitude in typical females compared to typical males,while this pattern of sex difference was absent in androgynous subjects.This shows that androgyny ‘eliminates' sex differences in emotional reactivity.More importantly,we further did EEG brain network analysis,and the results indicated that typical males showed enhanced network coupling strength between frontal/prefrontal(cognitive control related area)and parietal areas(emotion related area)than typical females,while that difference was again absent between androgynous male and androgynous female.This shows that the typical male automatically regulate their emotion when they watch negative pictures,thus showing a relatively low level of emotional reactivity.At the same time,we speculate that the typical male may be better at using automatic emotion regulation than the typical female.To test this inference,in study 2,we also used CSRI to screen out 97 typical male and typical female subjects,and divided them into four groups: typical male passive viewing group,typical male automatic cognitive reappraisal group,typical female passive viewing group and typical female automatic cognitive reappraisal group.During the experiment,we also collected the behavioral data and electrophysiological data.Behaviorally,we found that compared with the typical male passive viewing group,the negative emotional experience scores reported by the typical male automatic cognitive reappraisal group were significantly lower,while the negative emotional experience scores reported by the typical female passive viewing group and the typical female automatic cognitive reappraisal group were not significantly different.Similarly,EEG analysis showed that the amplitude of LPP induced by the typical male automatic reappraisal group was significantly smaller than that of the typical male passive viewing group,while the amplitude of LPP induced by the typical female automatic reappraisal group and the typical female passive viewing group had no significant difference.This showed that the typical male is indeed better than the typical female at using automatic emotion regulation strategies.In summary,the two studies collected behavioral and EEG data to explore sex differences in emotional reactivity and automatic emotional regulation.The first study shows that gender roles play an important role in the interpretation of sex difference in emotional reactivity,while the second study shows that the typical male are better at using automatic emotion regulation strategies to regulate negative emotion than the typical female.