Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative: Reducing ambivalence through instructed emotion regulation.

Ambivalence, the simultaneous experience of positivity and negativity, is a conflicting, uncomfortable, arousing state but is a necessary catalyst for behavior change. We sought to examine whether feelings of ambivalence can be reduced using instructed emotion regulation of positive and negative affect, the components of subjective ambivalence. Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) were collected while participants played 3 blocks of mixed gambles, in which each trial involved losing or winning the lesser or greater of 2 amounts.

The negativity bias, revisited: Evidence from neuroscience measures and an individual differences approach.

Past research has provided support for the existence of a negativity bias, the tendency for negativity to have a stronger impact than positivity. Theoretically, the negativity bias provides an evolutionary advantage, as it is more critical for survival to avoid a harmful stimulus than to pursue a potentially helpful one. The current paper reviews the theoretical grounding of the negativity bias in the Evaluative Space Model, and presents recent findings using a multilevel approach that further elucidate the mechanisms underlying the negativity bias and underscore the importance of the negativity bias for human functioning.

Ambivalence toward healthy and unhealthy food and moderation by individual differences in restrained eating.

Food may be a particularly ambivalent stimulus, as it may be associated with high feelings of both positivity and negativity (objective ambivalence), in addition to feelings of conflict (subjective ambivalence). In this study we examine objective and subjective ambivalence toward healthy and unhealthy food, as well as nonfood objects. We show that food (particularly unhealthy food) images do elicit higher ambivalence than nonfood images, particularly due to increased negative feelings.

Feeling good and bad about nothing at all: Evidence that the status quo can elicit mixed feelings.

Sometimes we come out ahead and sometimes we fall behind. Sometimes the status quo is maintained and we end up where we began. The status quo can be disappointing when things might have gone better and relieving when they might have gone worse, but it is not clear how the status quo will feel when things might have gone better or worse.

Corrigendum: Brief Mindfulness Meditation Improves Attention in Novices: Evidence From ERPs and Moderation by Neuroticism.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.3389/fnhum.2018.

Brief Mindfulness Meditation Improves Attention in Novices: Evidence From ERPs and Moderation by Neuroticism.

Past research has found that mindfulness meditation training improves executive attention. Event-related potentials (ERPs) have indicated that this effect could be driven by more efficient allocation of resources on demanding attentional tasks, such as the Flanker Task and the Attention Network Test (ANT). However, it is not clear whether these changes depend on long-term practice.

Negativity bias in false memory: moderation by neuroticism after a delay.

The negativity bias is the tendency for individuals to give greater weight, and often exhibit more rapid and extreme responses, to negative than positive information. Using the Deese-Roediger-McDermott illusory memory paradigm, the current study sought to examine how the negativity bias might affect both correct recognition for negative and positive words and false recognition for associated critical lures, as well as how trait neuroticism might moderate these effects. In two experiments, participants studied lists of words composed of semantic associates of an unpresented word (the critical lure).

Aging is associated with a prefrontal lateral-medial shift during picture-induced negative affect.

The capacity to adaptively respond to negative emotion is in part dependent upon lateral areas of the prefrontal cortex (PFC). Lateral PFC areas are particularly susceptible to age-related atrophy, which affects executive function (EF). We used structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to test the hypothesis that older age is associated with greater medial PFC engagement during processing of negative information, and that this engagement is dependent upon the integrity of grey matter structure in lateral PFC as well as EF.

Do Individual Differences and Aging Effects in the Estimation of Geographical Slant Reflect Cognitive or Perceptual Effects?

Several individual differences including age have been suggested to affect the perception of slant. A cross-sectional study of outdoor hill estimation ( = 106) was analyzed using individual difference measures of age, experiential knowledge, fitness, personality traits, and sex. Of particular note, it was found that for participants who reported any experiential knowledge about slant, estimates decreased (i.

Twice the negativity bias and half the positivity offset: Evaluative responses to emotional information in depression.

Background And Objectives: Humans have the dual capacity to assign a slightly pleasant valence to neutral stimuli (the positivity offset) to encourage approach behaviors, as well as to assign a higher negative valence to unpleasant images relative to the positive valence to equally arousing and extreme pleasant images (the negativity bias) to facilitate defensive strategies. We conducted an experimental psychopathology study to examine the extent to which the negativity bias and the positivity offset differ in participants with and without major depression..

The negativity bias predicts response rate to Behavioral Activation for depression.

Background And Objectives: This treatment study investigated the extent to which asymmetric dimensions of affective responding, specifically the positivity offset and the negativity bias, at pretreatment altered the rate of response to Behavioral Activation treatment for depression.

Method: Forty-one depressed participants were enrolled into 16 weekly sessions of BA. An additional 36 lifetime healthy participants were evaluated prospectively for 16 weeks to compare affective responding between healthy and remitted patients at post-treatment.

Prolonged marital stress is associated with short-lived responses to positive stimuli.

Marital stress is associated with a higher incidence of psychiatric disorders, in particular major depression. One pathway through which marital stress may impact emotional health is by compromising emotion-responding processes. We examined a longitudinal sample of adults (N = 116; 59 males; 39-84 years) to verify how marital stress predicts reactivity to, and recovery from, emotional provocation.

Purpose in life predicts better emotional recovery from negative stimuli.

Purpose in life predicts both health and longevity suggesting that the ability to find meaning from life's experiences, especially when confronting life's challenges, may be a mechanism underlying resilience. Having purpose in life may motivate reframing stressful situations to deal with them more productively, thereby facilitating recovery from stress and trauma. In turn, enhanced ability to recover from negative events may allow a person to achieve or maintain a feeling of greater purpose in life over time.

Individual differences in positivity offset and negativity bias: Gender-specific associations with two serotonin receptor genes.

Individual differences in the evaluation of affective stimuli, such as the positivity offset and negativity bias may have a biological basis. We tested whether two SNPs (; 102T>C and ; 1019C>G) related to serotonin receptor function, a biological pathway associated with affective regulation, were differentially related to positivity offset and negativity bias for males and females. Participants were 109 cigarette smokers who rated a series of affective stimuli to assess reactions to positive and negative pictures.

Spatial affect learning restricted in major depression relative to anxiety disorders and healthy controls.

Detecting and learning the location of unpleasant or pleasant scenarios, or spatial affect learning, is an essential skill that safeguards well-being (Crawford & Cacioppo, 2002). Potentially altered by psychiatric illness, this skill has yet to be measured in adults with and without major depressive disorder (MDD) and anxiety disorders (AD). This study enrolled 199 adults diagnosed with MDD and AD (n=53), MDD (n=47), AD (n=54), and no disorders (n=45).

Counterfactual thinking and reward processing: an fMRI study of responses to gamble outcomes.

The process of comparing obtained outcomes to alternative possible outcomes, known as counterfactual thinking, is inescapable in daily life; however, the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying counterfactual thinking and how they influence emotional responses to better and worse outcomes is not well understood. We conducted an event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) gambling study in which participants were informed of two equally possible outcomes of a card gamble before they selected a card. Participants reported experiencing mixed emotions (i.

Socially excluded individuals fail to recruit medial prefrontal cortex for negative social scenes.

Converging behavioral evidence suggests that people respond to experiences of social exclusion with both defensive and affiliative strategies, allowing them to avoid further distress while also encouraging re-establishment of positive social connections. However, there are unresolved questions regarding the cognitive mechanisms underlying people's responses to social exclusion. Here, we sought to gain insight into these behavioral tendencies by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the impact of social exclusion on neural responses to visual scenes that varied on dimensions of sociality and emotional valence.

Aging is associated with positive responding to neutral information but reduced recovery from negative information.

Studies on aging and emotion suggest an increase in reported positive affect, a processing bias of positive over negative information, as well as increasingly adaptive regulation in response to negative events with advancing age. These findings imply that older individuals evaluate information differently, resulting in lowered reactivity to, and/or faster recovery from, negative information, while maintaining more positive responding to positive information. We examined this hypothesis in an ongoing study on Midlife in the US (MIDUS II) where emotional reactivity and recovery were assessed in a large number of respondents (N = 159) from a wide age range (36-84 years).

The current status of research on the structure of evaluative space.

The structure of evaluative space shapes emotional life and must be capable of an astonishing range of emotional experience and expression. In this article, we outline the current status of research on the Evaluative Space Model (ESM; Cacioppo et al., 1997, 1999), which proposes that behavioral predispositions (e.

Corrugator muscle responses are associated with individual differences in positivity-negativity bias.

Corrugator supercilii muscle activity is considered an objective measure of valence because it increases in response to negatively valenced facial expressions (angry) and decreases to positive expressions (happy). The authors sought to determine if corrugator activity could be used as an objective measure of positivity-negativity bias. The authors recorded corrugator responses as participants rated angry, happy, and surprised faces as "positive" or "negative.

In the eye of the beholder: individual differences in perceived social isolation predict regional brain activation to social stimuli.

Prior research has shown that perceived social isolation (loneliness) motivates people to attend to and connect with others but to do so in a self-protective and paradoxically self-defeating fashion. Although recent research has shed light on the neural correlates of social perception, cooperation, empathy, rejection, and love, little is known about how individual differences in loneliness relate to neural responses to social and emotional stimuli. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we show that there are at least two neural mechanisms differentiating social perception in lonely and nonlonely young adults.

Neuroticism is associated with larger and more prolonged electrodermal responses to emotionally evocative pictures.

Elevated neuroticism is associated with increased psychological reactivity to stressors. Research on individual differences and physiological reactivity (e.g.

The interaction of social and emotional processes in the brain.

Social stimuli function as emotional barometers for the immediate environment are the catalysts for many emotional reactions, and have inherent value for relationships and survival independent of their current emotional content. We, therefore, propose that the neural mechanisms underlying social and emotional information processing may be interconnected. In the current study, we examined the independent and interactive effects of social and emotional processes on brain activation.

Effects of positive and negative affect on electromyographic activity over zygomaticus major and corrugator supercilii.

Pleasant stimuli typically elicit greater electromyographic (EMG) activity over zygomaticus major and less activity over corrugator supercilii than do unpleasant stimuli. To provide a systematic comparison of these 2 measures, the authors examined the relative form and strength of affective influences on activity over zygomaticus major and corrugator supercilii. Self-reported positive and negative affective reactions and facial EMG were collected as women (n = 68) were exposed to series of affective pictures, sounds, and words.

Just because you're imaging the brain doesn't mean you can stop using your head: a primer and set of first principles.

Developments within the neurosciences, cognitive sciences, and social sciences have contributed to the emergence of social neuroscience. Among the most obvious contemporary developments are brain-imaging procedures such as functional magnetic resonance imaging. The authors outline a set of first principles designed to help make sense of brain-imaging research within the fields of cognitive and social neuroscience.