What our eyes tell us about feelings: Tracking pupillary responses during emotion regulation processes
What our eyes tell us about feelings: Tracking pupillary responses during emotion regulation processes
复制标题
DOI：
10.1111/psyp.12816
复制
发表时间：
2017-04-01
期刊：
影响因子：
3.7
通讯作者：
Wolf, Oliver T.
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Kinner, Valerie L.;Kuchinke, Lars;Wolf, Oliver T.
情绪调节对适应性行为和心理健康至关重要。众所周知，用于改变情绪的策略对情绪反应的心理和生理方面的影响是不同的。然而，情绪调节结果主要是通过自我报告来评估的，比较调节策略的外周生理机制的研究数量有限。因此，本研究旨在探讨不同情绪调节策略对瞳孔扩张、皮肤电导反应和主观情绪反应的影响。研究人员向30名健康女性展示了消极和中性的图片，并要求她们通过重新评估或分散注意力来维持或调节即将到来的情绪反应。瞳孔扩张和皮肤电导反应在观看负面图片时明显增强。对于瞳孔来说，这种情绪唤醒效应在瞳孔反应的后期表现得尤为明显。根据主观评分，通过重评增加负面情绪导致瞳孔增大最为显著，而对瞳孔下调没有一致的影响。相比之下，在所有独立于策略的情绪调节条件下，早期峰值扩张都有所增强。皮肤电导反应不受情绪调节的进一步调节。这些结果表明，瞳孔直径受到情绪唤醒的调节，但最初与调节自动情绪反应所需的精神努力程度有关。因此，我们的数据提供了第一个证据，证明瞳孔反应可能包括两种不同的时间成分，一方面反映认知情绪调节的努力，另一方面反映情绪调节的成功。
Emotion regulation is essential for adaptive behavior and mental health. Strategies applied to alter emotions are known to differ in their impact on psychological and physiological aspects of the emotional response. However, emotion regulation outcome has primarily been assessed via self-report, and studies comparing regulation strategies with regard to their peripheral physiological mechanisms are limited in number. In the present study, we therefore aimed to investigate the effects of different emotion regulation strategies on pupil dilation, skin conductance responses, and subjective emotional responses. Thirty healthy females were presented with negative and neutral pictures and asked to maintain or up-and downregulate their upcoming emotional responses through reappraisal or distraction. Pupil dilation and skin conductance responses were significantly enhanced when viewing negative relative to neutral pictures. For the pupil, this emotional arousal effect manifested specifically late during the pupillary response. In accordance with subjective ratings, increasing negative emotions through reappraisal led to the most prominent pupil size enlargements, whereas no consistent effect for downregulation was found. In contrast, early peak dilations were enhanced in all emotion regulation conditions independent of strategy. Skin conductance responses were not further modulated by emotion regulation. These results indicate that pupil diameter is modulated by emotional arousal, but is initially related to the extent of mental effort required to regulate automatic emotional responses. Our data thus provide first evidence that the pupillary response might comprise two distinct temporal components reflecting cognitive emotion regulation effort on the one hand and emotion regulation success on the other hand.