Amygdala-related electroencephalogram neurofeedback as add-on therapy for treatment-resistant childhood sexual abuse posttraumatic stress disorder: feasibility study.

AIM: Childhood sexual abuse (CSA) among women is an alarmingly prevalent traumatic experience that often leads to debilitating and treatment-refractory posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), raising the need for novel adjunctive therapies. Neuroimaging investigations systematically report that amygdala hyperactivity is the most consistent and reliable neural abnormality in PTSD and following childhood abuse, raising the potential of implementing volitional neural modulation using neurofeedback (NF) aimed at down-regulating amygdala activity. This study aimed to reliably probe limbic activity but overcome the limited applicability of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) NF by using a scalable electroencephalogram NF probe of amygdala-related activity, termed amygdala electrical-finger-print (amyg-EFP) in a randomized controlled trial. METHOD: Fifty-five women with CSA-PTSD who were in ongoing intensive trauma-focused psychotherapy for a minimum of 1 year but still met Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) PTSD criteria were randomized to either 10 add-on sessions of amyg-EFP-NF training (test group) or continuing psychotherapy (control group). Participants were blindly assessed for PTSD symptoms before and after the NF training period, followed by self-reported clinical follow-up at 1, 3, and 6 months, as well as one session of amygdala real-time fMRI-NF before and after NF training period. RESULTS: Participants in the test group compared with the control group demonstrated a marginally significant immediate reduction in PTSD symptoms, which progressively improved during the follow-up period. In addition, successful neuromodulation during NF training was demonstrated. CONCLUSION: This feasibility study for patients with treatment-resistant CSA-PTSD indicates that amyg-EFP-NF is a viable and efficient intervention.

Reduced emotion regulatory selection flexibility in post-traumatic stress disorder: converging performance-based evidence from two PTSD populations.

BACKGROUND: Contemporary views of emotion dysregulation in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) highlight reduced ability to flexibly select regulatory strategies according to differing situational demands. However, empirical evidence of reduced regulatory selection flexibility in PTSD is lacking. Multiple studies show that healthy individuals demonstrate regulatory selection flexibility manifested in selecting attentional disengagement regulatory strategies (e.g. distraction) in high-intensity emotional contexts and selecting engagement meaning change strategies (e.g. reappraisal) in low-intensity contexts. Accordingly, we hypothesized that PTSD populations will show reduced regulatory selection flexibility manifested in diminished increase in distraction (over reappraisal) preference as intensity increases from low to high intensity. METHODS: Study 1 compared student participants with high (N = 22) post-traumatic symptoms (PTS, meeting the clinical cutoff for PTSD) and participants with low (N = 22) post-traumatic symptoms. Study 2 compared PTSD diagnosed women (N = 31) due to childhood sexual abuse and matched non-clinical women (N = 31). In both studies, participants completed a well-established regulatory selection flexibility performance-based paradigm that involves selecting between distraction and reappraisal to regulate negative emotional words of low and high intensity. RESULTS: Beyond demonstrating adequate psychometric properties, Study 1 confirmed that relative to the low PTS group, the high PTS group presented reduced regulatory selection flexibility (p = 0.01, ŋ²â‚š= 0.14). Study 2 critically extended findings of Study 1, in showing similar reduced regulatory selection flexibility in a diagnosed PTSD population, relative to a non-clinical population (p = 0.002, ŋ²â‚š= 0.114). CONCLUSIONS: Two studies provide converging evidence for reduced emotion regulatory selection flexibility in two PTSD populations.

Neural Indices of Emotion Regulatory Implementation Correlate With Behavioral Regulatory Selection: Proof-of-Concept Investigation.

"Do what you do best" conveys an intuition about the association between ability and preference. In the field of emotion regulation, ability and preference are manifested in two central stages, namely, implementation and selection of regulatory strategies, which to date have been mainly studied separately. Accordingly, the present proof-of-concept study wished to provide preliminary evidence for an association between neural indices of implementation ability and behavioral selection preferences. In this pilot study, participants performed a classic neuroimaging regulatory implementation task that examined their ability (neurally reflected in the degree of amygdala modulation) to execute two central regulatory strategies, namely, attentional distraction and cognitive reappraisal while viewing negative images. Then participants performed a separate, classic behavioral selection task that examined their choice preferences for using distraction and reappraisal while viewing negative images. Confirming our conceptual framework, we found that exclusively for distraction, which has been associated with robust amygdala modulation, a decrease in amygdala activity during implementation (i.e., enhanced ability) was associated with enhanced preference to behaviorally select distraction [r(15) = -0.69, p = 0.004]. These preliminary findings link between two central emotion regulatory stages, suggesting a clue of the adaptive association between neural ability and behavioral preference for particular regulatory strategies.

Steady-state visual evoked potentials differentiate between internally and externally directed attention.

While attention to external visual stimuli has been extensively studied, attention directed internally towards mental contents (e.g., thoughts, memories) or bodily signals (e.g., breathing, heartbeat) has only recently become a subject of increased interest, due to its relation to interoception, contemplative practices and mental health. The present study aimed at expanding the methodological toolbox for studying internal attention, by examining for the first time whether the steady-state visual evoked potential (ssVEP), a well-established measure of attention, can differentiate between internally and externally directed attention. To this end, we designed a task in which flickering dots were used to generate ssVEPs, and instructed participants to count visual targets (external attention condition) or their heartbeats (internal attention condition). We compared the ssVEP responses between conditions, along with alpha-band activity and the heartbeat evoked potential (HEP) - two electrophysiological measures associated with internally directed attention. Consistent with our hypotheses, we found that both the magnitude and the phase synchronization of the ssVEP decreased when attention was directed internally, suggesting that ssVEP measures are able to differentiate between internal and external attention. Additionally, and in line with previous findings, we found larger suppression of parieto-occipital alpha-band activity and an increase of the HEP amplitude in the internal attention condition. Furthermore, we found a trade-off between changes in ssVEP response and changes in HEP and alpha-band activity: when shifting from internal to external attention, increase in ssVEP response was related to a decrease in parieto-occipital alpha-band activity and HEP amplitudes. These findings suggest that shifting between external and internal directed attention prompts a re-allocation of limited processing resources that are shared between external sensory and interoceptive processing.

Do people choose the same strategies to regulate other people's emotions as they choose to regulate their own?

How do people choose how to regulate others' emotional responses? We extended previous work on how the intensity of an emotional situation influences which strategies people choose to regulate their emotions (i.e., intrapersonal emotion regulation choice) to also consider the effect of intensity on which strategies people choose to regulate other people's emotions (i.e., interpersonal emotion regulation choice). Studies 1a and 1b found that the intensity of the emotional situation influenced whether participants chose distraction or reappraisal in both intrapersonal and interpersonal regulation contexts, but also that the effect of intensity differed between the contexts (participants choose reappraisal more frequently for others in intense situations than for themselves). However, this difference was stronger (or only found) when participants helped the other person to control their emotions first. Two further studies examined whether differences in perceived intensity (Study 2) and/or the anticipated effort or effectiveness of the strategies (Study 3) could explain the difference between intrapersonal and interpersonal contexts. Together, the findings suggest that the regulation strategies that people choose depend on the intensity of the emotional situation, the target of regulation, and whether people choose how to regulate their own emotions before choosing how to regulate another person's emotions, with preliminary evidence that differences between intrapersonal and interpersonal emotion regulation choice may be associated with differences in the anticipated effort and effectiveness of regulation between these contexts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Flexible emotion regulatory selection when coping with COVID-19-related threats during quarantine.

The COVID-19 pandemic poses significant emotional challenges that individuals need to select how to regulate. The present study directly examined how during the pandemic, healthy individuals select between regulatory strategies to cope with varying COVID-19-related threats, and whether an adaptive flexible regulatory selection pattern will emerge in this unique threatening global context. Accordingly, this two-study investigation tested how healthy individuals during a strict state issued quarantine, behaviorally select to regulate COVID-19-related threats varying in their intensity. Study 1 created and validated an ecologically relevant set of low and high intensity sentences covering major COVID-19 facets that include experiencing physical symptoms, infection threats, and social and economic consequences. Study 2 examined the influence of the intensity of these COVID-19-related threats, on behavioral regulatory selection choices between disengagement via attentional distraction and engagement via reappraisal. Confirming a flexible regulatory selection conception, healthy individuals showed strong choice preference for engagement reappraisal when regulating low intensity COVID-19-related threats, but showed strong choice preference for disengagement distraction when regulating high intensity COVID-19-related threats. These findings support the importance of regulatory selection flexibility for psychological resilience during a major global crisis.

Mental Logout: Behavioral and Neural Correlates of Regulating Temptations to Use Social Media.

Individuals sometimes use social media instead of sleeping or while driving. This fact raises the crucial need for-and challenge of-successfully self-regulating potent social-media temptations. To date, however, empirical evidence showing whether social-media temptations can be self-regulated and how self-regulation can be achieved remains scarce. Accordingly, the present within-participants study (N = 30 adults) provided causal evidence for self-regulation of social-media content and identified a potential underlying neural mechanism. We tested the premise that successful self-regulation requires limiting the mental representation of temptations in working memory. Specifically, we showed that loading working memory with neutral contents via attentional distraction, relative to passively watching tempting social-media stimuli, resulted in reduced self-reported desire to use social media, reduced initial attention allocation toward social-media stimuli (reduced late-positive-potential amplitudes), and reduced online representation of social-media stimuli in working memory (reduced contralateral-delay-activity amplitudes). These results have important implications for successfully navigating a social-media-saturated environment.

The Effects of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction on the Association Between Autonomic Interoceptive Signals and Emotion Regulation Selection.

OBJECTIVE: The ability to select the most adaptive regulatory strategy as a function of the emotional context plays a pivotal role in psychological health. Recently, we showed that mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) can improve the sensitivity of regulatory strategy selection to emotional intensity. However, the mechanisms underlying this improvement are unclear. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that MBIs support adaptive regulatory selection by increasing sensitivity to interoceptive signals associated with the emotional stimuli. METHODS: Participants (n = 84, mean [standard deviation {SD}] age = 30.9 [8.3] years; 54% women) were randomized to either a mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) program or a wait-list control condition. Before and after the MBSR program, physiological measures for autonomic nervous system activity were obtained, and participants performed a task examining emotion regulation selections (reappraisal versus distraction) when confronted with low or high negative intensity images. They also completed a battery of mindfulness, interoception, and well-being self-report measures. A cross-classified model was used for the main analyses. RESULTS: The participants assigned to the MBSR were overall more likely to choose reappraisal than distraction (b = 0.26, posterior SD = 0.13, 95confidence interval = 0.02-0.52) after the program. Interoceptive signals in response to negative images were associated with subsequent regulatory selections (b = 0.02, posterior SD = 0.01, 95% confidence interval = 0.01-0.03) in the MBSR group. Specifically, lower cardiac reactivity was associated with the choice to reappraise, whereas higher cardiac reactivity was related to the choice to distract. Greater differences in cardiac reactivity between states that prompt reappraisal and states that prompt distraction were associated with higher well-being (Satisfaction With Life Scale, Pearson r (29) = 0.527, p = .003). CONCLUSIONS: Mindfulness seems to increase the sensitivity of regulatory selections to interoceptive signals, and this is associated with subjective well-being. This may be a central pathway through which MBIs exert their positive effects on mental health and resilience.

Identifying the determinants of emotion regulation choice: a systematic review with meta-analysis.

Day-to-day life is inundated with attempts to control emotions and a wealth of research has examined what strategies people use and how effective these strategies are. However, until more recently, research has often neglected more basic questions such as whether and how people choose to regulate their emotions (i.e. emotion regulation choice). In an effort to identify what we know and what we need to know, we systematically reviewed studies that examined potential determinants of whether and how people choose to regulate their emotions. Eighteen determinants were identified across 219 studies and were categorised as being affective, cognitive, motivational, individual or social-cultural in nature. Where there were sufficient primary studies, meta-analysis was used to quantify the size of the associations between potential determinants and measures of whether and how people choose to regulate their emotions. Based on the findings, we propose that people's decisions about whether and how to regulate their emotions are determined by factors relating to the individual doing the regulating, the emotion that is being regulated, and both the immediate situation and the broader social context in which the regulation is taking place.

Social Media and Well-Being: Pitfalls, Progress, and Next Steps.

Within a relatively short time span, social media have transformed the way humans interact, leading many to wonder what, if any, implications this interactive revolution has had for people's emotional lives. Over the past 15 years, an explosion of research has examined this issue, generating countless studies and heated debate. Although early research generated inconclusive findings, several experiments have revealed small negative effects of social media use on well-being. These results mask, however, a deeper set of complexities. Accumulating evidence indicates that social media can enhance or diminish well-being depending on how people use them. Future research is needed to model these complexities using stronger methods to advance knowledge in this domain.

The neural bases of cognitive emotion regulation: The roles of strategy and intensity.

When confronted with unwanted negative emotions, individuals use a variety of cognitive strategies for regulating these emotions. The brain mechanisms underlying these emotion regulation strategies have not been fully characterized, and it is not yet clear whether these mechanisms vary as a function of emotion intensity. To address these issues, 30 community participants (17 females, 13 males, Mage = 24.3 years) completed a picture-viewing emotion regulation task with neutral viewing, reacting to negative stimuli, cognitive reappraisal, attentional deployment, and self-distancing conditions. Brain and behavioral data were simultaneously collected in a 3T GE MRI scanner. Findings indicated that prefrontal regions were engaged by all three regulation strategies, but reappraisal showed the least amount of increase in activity as a function of intensity. Overall, these results suggest that there are both brain and behavioral effects of intensity and that intensity is useful for probing strategy-specific effects and the relationships between the strategies. Furthermore, while these three strategies showed significant overlap, there also were specific strategy-intensity interactions, such as frontoparietal control regions being preferentially activated by reappraisal and self-distancing. Conversely, self-referential and attentional regions were preferentially recruited by self-distancing and distraction as intensity increased. Overall, these findings are consistent with the notion that there is a continuum of cognitive emotion regulation along which all three of these strategies lie.

How anticipatory information shapes subsequent emotion regulation.

Individuals often receive preceding information concerning future unpleasant events that will require regulating emotions. However, conceptual accounts explaining how the presence of anticipatory information, as well as biases in the content of anticipatory information, influence subsequent emotion regulation are lacking. We propose a novel account that explains how the cognitive processing of anticipatory information influences subsequent cognitive regulatory strategies. Specifically, the presence (vs. absence) of anticipatory information, which primarily influences attention toward upcoming unpleasant events, largely impacts subsequent attention-modulation regulatory strategies. By contrast, biased (vs. unbiased) contents of anticipatory information, that primarily influence the meaning of upcoming unpleasant events, largely impact meaning-modulation regulatory strategies. Our account further argues that the fit between the direction of influence of anticipatory information on cognition and the underlying mechanisms of cognitive down-regulation strategies determines regulatory challenge (i.e., effort and effectiveness of regulation). When anticipatory information decreases attention to, or negative meaning of, upcoming unpleasant stimuli, it fits a subsequent down-regulation goal to decrease attention or negative meaning, resulting in low regulatory challenge. However, when anticipatory information enhances attention to, or negative meaning of, upcoming unpleasant stimuli, it conflicts with a counter down-regulation goal to decrease attention or negative meaning (i.e., no fit), resulting in high regulatory challenge. Broad implications and future directions are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

The relation between emotion regulation choice and posttraumatic growth.

Previous research has examined emotion regulation (ER) and trauma in the context of psychopathology, yet little research has examined ER in posttraumatic growth (PTG), the experience of positive psychological change following a traumatic event. ER typically involves decreasing negative affect by engaging (e.g. reappraisal) or disengaging (e.g. distraction) with emotional content. To investigate how ER may support PTG, participants who experienced a traumatic event in the past 6 months completed a PTG questionnaire and an ER choice task in which they down regulated their negative emotion in response to negative pictures of varying intensity by choosing to distract or reappraise. Latent growth curve analyses revealed that an increase in reappraisal choice from low to high subjective stimulus intensity predicted higher PTG, suggesting that individuals who chose reappraisal more as intensity increased reported higher PTG. Findings suggest that reappraisal of negative stimuli following a traumatic event may be a key component of PTG.

The fit between emotion regulation choice and individual resources is associated with adaptive functioning among young children.

Being able to resist temptation at a young age is crucial for successful functioning yet it can be challenging. According to the Selection, Optimization, and Compensation with Emotion Regulation (SOC-ER) framework, one central element of successful functioning is selection which involves choosing among regulatory options whose resource requirements fits with the amount of available resources an individual possesses. Although conceptually important, direct empirical evidence is lacking. Accordingly, the present study utilised performance based measures to examine the interactive effect of regulatory selection to resist temptation, and individual differences in executive resources, on functioning in young children. Specifically, 39 first grade children that varied in executive resources (working memory capacity, WMC), selected between two major regulatory strategies (reappraisal and distraction) to resist temptation, that varied in their resource demands, and were evaluated on successful functioning (via questionnaires completed by parents, that assess daily-life behaviours requiring executive functioning). Supporting SOC-ER predictions, we found that among children with low (but not high) WMC, choosing the less effortful distraction regulatory strategy was associated with adaptive functioning. Additionally, regulatory choice preferences previously obtained with adults were extended to children. Broad implications are discussed.

Monitoring in emotion regulation: behavioral decisions and neural consequences.

Monitoring and deciding how to adjust an active regulatory strategy in order to maximize adaptive outcomes is an integral element of emotion regulation, yet existing evidence remains scarce. Filling this gap, the present study examined core factors that determine behavioral regulatory monitoring decisions and the neuro-affective consequences of these decisions. Using a novel paradigm, the initial implementation of central downregulation strategies (distraction, reappraisal) and the emotional intensity (high, low) were manipulated, prior to making a behavioral decision to maintain the initial implemented strategy or switch from it. Neuro-affective consequences of these behavioral decisions were evaluated using the Late Positive Potential (LPP), an electro-cortical measure of regulatory success. Confirming predictions, initial implementation of reappraisal in high intensity and distraction in low intensity (Strategy × Intensity combinations that were established in prior studies as non-preferred by individuals), resulted in increased behavioral switching frequency. Neurally, we expected and found that in high (but not low) emotional intensity, where distraction was more effective than reappraisal, maintaining distraction (relative to switching to reappraisal) and switching to distraction (relative to maintaining reappraisal) resulted in larger LPP modulation. These findings suggest that monitoring decisions are consistent with previously established regulatory preferences and are associated with adaptive short-term neural consequences.

Do the ends dictate the means in emotion regulation?

Although selecting emotion regulation strategies constitutes means to achieve emotion goals (i.e., desired emotional states), strategy selection and goals have been studied independently. We propose that the strategies people select are often dictated by what they want to feel. We tested the possibility that emotion regulation involves choosing strategies that match emotion goals. We expected people who are motivated to decrease emotional intensity to select strategies that are tailored for decreasing emotions (e.g., distraction), whereas those who are motivated to increase emotional intensity to select strategies that are tailored for increasing emotions (e.g., rumination). We expected this pattern to be evident both in the lab and in everyday life. We first verified that some strategies (i.e., distraction) are more effective in decreasing, and other strategies (i.e., rumination) more effective in increasing emotions (Study 1). Next, we tested whether emotion goals (decrease vs. increase emotion) direct the selection of strategies inside (Studies 2-3) and outside (Study 4) the laboratory. As predicted, participants were more likely to select strategies that decrease emotions (e.g., distraction, suppression) when motivated to decrease, and strategies that increase emotions (e.g., rumination) when motivated to increase negative (Studies 2-4) and positive (Study 3) emotions. Finally, in Study 5, we demonstrated that emotional dysfunction is linked to less flexibility in matching strategies to goals. Compared to healthy participants, depressed participants selected rumination less for increasing emotions and selected distraction less for decreasing emotions. Our findings show that what people want to feel can determine how they regulate emotions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

When knowledge is (not) power- the influence of anticipatory information on subsequent emotion regulation: Neural and behavioral evidence.

Common wisdom suggests that knowledge is power. The present investigation tested the boundary conditions of this quote by asking how knowledge, in the form of anticipatory information regarding future emotional events, can be maladaptive for certain forms of subsequent coping. Therefore, Study 1 tested our hypothesis that anticipatory information selectively conflicts with and impairs subsequent emotion regulation that involves disengagement from processing emotional information (distraction). Importantly, utilizing event-related potentials enabled tracking the temporal neural processing stages underlying this selective regulatory impairment. Study 2 provided an important behavioral extension by exploring individuals' knowledge regarding the influence of anticipatory information on subsequent regulation and the experiential consequences of this knowledge. Results of Study 1 confirmed that anticipatory information amplified initial attention toward emotional stimuli, selectively conflicting with continuous efforts to disengage attention via distraction (enhanced sustained late positive potentials amplitudes). Converging evidence demonstrated that even prior to regulation, receiving anticipatory information when expecting to distract produced a strong conflict (enhanced stimulus preceding negativity amplitudes). Moreover, results of Study 2 showed that individuals adequately chose to refrain from anticipatory information when expecting to distract, with suggestive evidence for resultant decreased negative experience. Counter to our prediction, anticipatory information did not facilitate subsequent regulation that involves engaging with emotional information processing (reappraisal). Nonetheless, individuals strongly preferred to receive anticipatory information when about to reappraise. Taken together, these findings suggest that knowledge is not power when it comes to disengagement coping, but individuals seem to recognize this maladaptive link and adjust their information-seeking behavior accordingly. (PsycINFO Database Record

For whom is social-network usage associated with anxiety? The moderating role of neural working-memory filtering of Facebook information.

Is Facebook usage bad for mental health? Existing studies provide mixed results, and direct evidence for neural underlying moderators is lacking. We suggest that being able to filter social-network information from accessing working memory is essential to preserve limited cognitive resources to pursue relevant goals. Accordingly, among individuals with impaired neural social-network filtering ability, enhanced social-network usage would be associated with negative mental health. Specifically, participants performed a novel electrophysiological paradigm that isolates neural Facebook filtering ability. Participants' actual Facebook behavior and anxious symptomatology were assessed. Confirming evidence showed that enhanced Facebook usage was associated with anxious symptoms among individuals with impaired neural Facebook filtering ability. Although less robust and tentative, additional suggestive evidence indicated that this specific Facebook filtering impairment was not better explained by a general filtering deficit. These results involving a neural social-network filtering moderator, may help understand for whom increased online social-network usage is associated with negative mental health.

Turning off hot feelings: Down-regulation of sexual desire using distraction and situation-focused reappraisal.

Despite the frequent need to down-regulate sexual desire, existing studies are scarce, and focus on strategies that involve disengagement from processing sexual stimuli. Accordingly, the present study compared the efficacy of down-regulating sexual desire via disengagement (attentional distraction) and engagement (situation-focused reappraisal) strategies. Utilizing Event Related Potentials, we measured the Late Positive Potential (LPP) - an electro-cortical component that denotes processing of arousing stimuli, showing decreased amplitudes during successful down-regulation. Additionally, we explored whether the sexual-intensity level of stimuli (validated in a pilot study) impacts the efficacy of, and individuals' behavioral preferences for distraction and situation-focused reappraisal. Supporting our predictions, relative to passive watching, both strategies successfully attenuated self-reported desire and LPP amplitudes, with a marginal trend (p = .07) showing stronger LPP attenuation during distraction compared to reappraisal. While sexual-intensity did not moderate regulatory efficacy, as predicted, disengagement-distraction preference increased for sexually-intense relative to sexually-mild stimuli. Broad implications are discussed.

When ideology meets conflict-related content: Influences on emotion generation and regulation.

Do rightists and leftists experience information about suffering and harm with differing emotional intensities, depending on the identity of target depicted? Do they consequently choose differently how to regulate or cope with these emotions? Research has identified ideological differences in emotional processes, but it has yet to identify what types of content lead to ideological differences in emotional intensity or whether these content-dependent differences relate to differing preferences for engaging versus disengaging emotion-regulation strategies. We posited that right-left differences in experienced emotional intensity would be context-dependent, emerging mostly in response to depictions of harm to the outgroup, in accordance with the centrality of intergroup attitudes to ideological self-placement in conflict. Study 1 (N = 83) supported this hypothesis, with leftists (vs. rightists) experiencing outgroup harm (but not ingroup harm or conflict-irrelevant harm) with greater emotional intensity. Study 2 (N = 101), which replicated this finding, additionally examined whether behavioral differences in regulatory choice consequently emerge mostly regarding outgroup harm. We tested 2 competing hypotheses as to the nature of these differences: (a) the intensity hypothesis, positing that leftists (more than rightists) would regulate their intensified reactions to outgroup harm through disengagement-distraction (vs. engagement-reappraisal) due to a documented greater preference for disengaging coping strategies as intensity increases, and (b) the motivation hypothesis, positing that leftists (more than rightists) would prefer engagement-reappraisal (vs. disengagement-distraction), consistent with leftists' documented greater preference for intergroup empathy. Results exclusively supported the intensity hypothesis, and the significance of both studies is discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record