The levonorgestrel-releasing intrauterine device is related to early emotional reactivity: An ERP study.

Despite the evidence of altered emotion processing in oral contraceptive (OC) users, the impact of hormonal intrauterine devices (IUD) on emotional processing remains unexplored. Our study aimed to investigate how behavioural performance and event-related potentials (ERPs) linked with emotion reactivity and its regulation are associated with hormonal profiles of women using different types of hormonal contraception and naturally cycling women. Women using OCs (n = 25), hormonal IUDs (n = 33), and naturally cycling women in their early follicular (NCF, n = 33) or mid-luteal (NCL, n = 28) phase of the menstrual cycle were instructed to view emotional pictures (neutral, low and high negativity) and use cognitive reappraisal to up- or down-regulate negative emotions, while their electroencephalogram was recorded.

Reappraising reappraisal: an expanded view.

Reappraisal is a frequently used and often successful emotion regulation strategy. However, its underlying cognitive mechanisms are not well understood. In this paper, we seek to clarify these mechanisms by expanding upon our recently proposed reAppraisal framework.

Appraisal shifts during reappraisal.

How to model the processes involved in regulating emotions via reappraisal? In two studies, we tested whether reappraisal impacts emotions through shifts along appraisal dimensions. In a first experimental study, 437 students imagined reliving a recent distressing event and rated their appraisals and emotions before and after using reappraisal to feel less negative about the event. Between 19% and 49% of changes to different emotions were statistically mediated by shifts along 10 appraisal dimensions.

The regulation of recurrent negative emotion in the aftermath of a lost election.

For some American voters, the news of Mr. Trump's victory in the 2016 presidential election caused recurrent emotions that were negative, persistent, and intense enough to elicit repeated attempts at emotion regulation. This afforded a rare opportunity to analyse the regulation of recurrent emotions in a natural, non-laboratory context.

Mental illness and well-being: an affect regulation perspective.

Mental health crucially depends upon affective states such as emotions, stress responses, impulses and moods. These states shape how we think, feel and behave. Often, they support adaptive functioning.

Attention biases in preoccupation with body image: An ERP study of the role of social comparison and automaticity when processing body size.

Appearance-related attention biases are thought to contribute to body image disturbances. We investigated how preoccupation with body image is associated with attention biases to body size, focusing on the role of social comparison processes and automaticity. Thirty-six women varying on self-reported preoccupation compared their actual body size to size-modified images of either themselves or a figure-matched peer.

Mechanisms of mindfulness: The dynamics of affective adaptation during open monitoring.

Mindfulness - the nonjudgmental awareness of the present experience - is thought to facilitate affective adaptation through increased exposure to emotions and faster extinction of habitual responses. To test this framework, the amplification of the Late Positive Potential (LPP) by negative relative to neutral images was analyzed across stimulus repetitions while 37 novices performed an open monitoring mindfulness exercise. Compared to two active control conditions where attention was either diverted to a distracting task or the stimuli were attended without mindfulness instructions, open monitoring enhanced the initial LPP response to negative stimuli, indicating increased emotional exposure.

Eye contact reveals a relationship between Neuroticism and anterior EEG asymmetry.

Although anterior functional brain asymmetry has been linked to individual differences in affect and motivation, its relations with the Five Factor Model personality traits remain unclear. We investigated anterior EEG alpha-activity asymmetry in response to variable degrees of social contact induced by different gaze directions of a "live" model. Neuroticism was negatively related to the anterior EEG asymmetry scores in response to direct gaze, indicating that higher levels of Neuroticism were associated with avoidance-related, relative right-sided functional brain asymmetry.

Personality cannot be predicted from the power of resting state EEG.

In the present study we asked whether it is possible to decode personality traits from resting state EEG data. EEG was recorded from a large sample of subjects (n = 289) who had answered questionnaires measuring personality trait scores of the five dimensions as well as the 10 subordinate aspects of the Big Five. Machine learning algorithms were used to build a classifier to predict each personality trait from power spectra of the resting state EEG data.