Neural signatures of emotion regulation.

Emotional experience is central to a fulfilling life. Although exposure to negative experiences is inevitable, an individual's emotion regulation response may buffer against psychopathology. Identification of neural activation patterns associated with emotion regulation via an fMRI task is a promising and non-invasive means of furthering our understanding of the how the brain engages with negative experiences. Prior work has applied multivariate pattern analysis to identify signatures of response to negative emotion-inducing images; we adapt these techniques to establish novel neural signatures associated with conscious efforts to modulate emotional response. We model voxel-level activation via LASSO principal components regression and linear discriminant analysis to predict if a subject was engaged in emotion regulation and to identify brain regions which define this emotion regulation signature. We train our models using 82 participants and evaluate them on a holdout sample of 40 participants, demonstrating an accuracy up to 82.5% across three classes. Our results suggest that emotion regulation produces a unique signature that is differentiable from passive viewing of negative and neutral imagery.

How do people use reappraisal? An investigation of selection frequency and affective outcomes of reappraisal tactics.

Although the effects of different emotion regulation strategies are well-documented, most studies to date have focused on the selection and implementation of broad strategies, while overlooking the selection and implementation of specific tactics to enact those strategies. The present research investigated the strategy of cognitive reappraisal and the differences in selection frequency and affective outcomes that are associated with the implementation of different reappraisal tactics to enact that strategy. Participants completed a laboratory task in which they were instructed to reappraise or not to reappraise negative images and reported on their use of specific reappraisal tactics for every trial. Using established reappraisal tactic coding, we assessed how people selected from among common tactics for each image (Study 1) and all tactics (Study 2) and implemented those tactics to reappraise negative images. We compared reappraisal tactic selection and implementation when used during instructed reappraisal versus during spontaneous reappraisal, in the nonreappraise condition. Results of both studies indicate that tactics were used more often when instructed to reappraise versus when spontaneously reappraising. Participants used some tactics (e.g., reality challenge) more frequently compared to the rest of the tactics in both conditions. Negative affect was lower following instructed versus spontaneous reappraisal. Some tactics (e.g., change current circumstances) were more effective at decreasing negative affect in both conditions. Knowing which reappraisal tactics are most frequently selected, and their affective outcomes when used when prompted or spontaneously, may help us better understand how to improve people's ability to use reappraisal to achieve their emotional goals. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The Future of Immersive Mood Induction in Affective Science: Using Virtual Reality to Test Effects of Mood Context on Task Performance.

A fundamental premise of affective and clinical science is that fluctuations in mood drive meaningful changes in cognition and behavior. These theories are often tested via laboratory mood induction procedures followed by performing an established task. Despite advances in understanding the temporal dynamics of emotions, it is still unclear whether it is the enduring mood that impacts subsequent task performance. Additionally, this design requires task switching, which may limit the impact of mood and affect task performance. We suggest that virtual reality (VR) offers a more powerful, immersive alternative to traditional mood induction methods and effectively addresses these limitations because it can be used to create mood contexts that occur simultaneously with task performance. VR creates an immersive, real-world experience while benefiting from a well-controlled laboratory setting (Diniz Bernardo et al., 2021). We first summarize the literature on mood induction methodologies, including evidence that VR creates a more immersive environment, leading to mood inductions that are greater in magnitude than other methods. We then report a novel empirical study on the feasibility of utilizing VR to create a mood context that occurs simultaneously with a gold-standard emotion regulation task. Our results indicate that VR was a powerful and enduring positive mood induction tool, resulting in immediate changes in mood and greater trial-by-trial positivity ratings during the concurrent task. Portions of this study were pre-registered on August 3, 2020, on the Clinical Trials website (project citation: https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT04496258). Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42761-023-00213-1.

Emotion regulation in young adults with family history of harmful alcohol use: A fMRI study.

BACKGROUND: Alcohol use disorder is associated with difficulties in emotion regulation and cognitive reappraisal. Family history of harmful alcohol use increases risk of substance use disorders, but no studies have examined whether family history is associated with altered neural activation during cognitive reappraisal relative to passive viewing of negative images in a sample of young adults without current substance use disorders. METHODS: Participants (N = 75 with positive [n = 31] or negative [n = 44] family histories of harmful alcohol use) completed the emotion regulation task during an MRI scan, and the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire to assess use of emotion regulation and suppression strategies. Whole-brain analyses and amygdala region of interest analyses using linear mixed-effects models assessed family history group and cue effects on neural activation during the task. RESULTS: The groups did not differ on trait reappraisal, suppression, or negative emotion following reappraisal. In general, group effects in whole-brain and amygdala activation during the cognitive reappraisal contrast indicated small effect sizes (2.2% of voxels had d>0.20) that were not significantly different. Participants with positive family histories engaged the right middle and superior frontal gyri to a greater extent than participants with negative family histories during the decrease-negative cue (t = 4.14, p = .001). CONCLUSIONS: For at-risk young adults without current harmful substance use, family history of harmful alcohol use does not appear to be associated with disrupted emotion regulation when instructed to apply cognitive reappraisal. Reappraisal may be a feasible therapeutic target for those who develop a substance use disorder with associated emotion dysregulation.

Reappraisal and mentalizing: Perceived difficulty and effects on negative emotion.

Previous work suggests that, in some circumstances, cognitive processes can be facilitated by engaging related processes. In this study, we investigated whether engaging in mentalizing during reappraisal, an emotion regulation strategy, would lead to greater changes in affect and reduce the perceived difficulty of reappraisal. We trained participants to reappraise negative pictures through reinterpretation. For some trials, participants generated reappraisals as they would for themselves, while for others, they mentalized, generating reappraisals while taking the perspective of a specific, close friend viewing the pictures. Participants rated their own negative affect and the perceived difficulty of reappraisal both online (i.e., during the task) and immediately posttask. We observed different results for the impact of mentalizing through online and retrospective (posttask) reports. As predicted, participants retrospectively reported that reappraisal while mentalizing was less difficult and decreased their negative affect. Online, however, some evidence suggested that reappraisal while mentalizing was perceived as more difficult and resulted in greater negative affect. Overall, we did not observe a facilitative effect of mentalizing on reappraisal, but in retrospect, individuals may have believed that mentalizing was helpful for reappraisal. More broadly, these findings emphasize the importance of the cognitive context of reappraisal and different types of self-report. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Multivariate Brain Activity while Viewing and Reappraising Affective Scenes Does Not Predict the Multiyear Progression of Preclinical Atherosclerosis in Otherwise Healthy Midlife Adults.

Cognitive reappraisal is an emotion regulation strategy that is postulated to reduce risk for atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (CVD), particularly the risk due to negative affect. At present, however, the brain systems and vascular pathways that may link reappraisal to CVD risk remain unclear. This study thus tested whether brain activity evoked by using reappraisal to reduce negative affect would predict the multiyear progression of a vascular marker of preclinical atherosclerosis and CVD risk: carotid artery intima-media thickness (CA-IMT). Participants were 176 otherwise healthy adults (50.6% women; aged 30-51 years) who completed a functional magnetic resonance imaging task involving the reappraisal of unpleasant scenes from the International Affective Picture System. Ultrasonography was used to compute CA-IMT at baseline and a median of 2.78 (interquartile range, 2.67 to 2.98) years later among 146 participants. As expected, reappraisal engaged brain systems implicated in emotion regulation. Reappraisal also reduced self-reported negative affect. On average, CA-IMT progressed over the follow-up period. However, multivariate and cross-validated machine-learning models demonstrated that brain activity during reappraisal failed to predict CA-IMT progression. Contrary to hypotheses, brain activity during cognitive reappraisal to reduce negative affect does not appear to forecast the progression of a vascular marker of CVD risk. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42761-021-00098-y.

What Parts of Reappraisal Make Us Feel Better? Dissociating the Generation of Reappraisals from Their Implementation.

Although reappraisal has been shown to be a highly successfully emotion regulation strategy, it requires several sequential steps, and it is still unclear when in the reappraisal process emotion changes. We experimentally dissociated the generation of reappraisals from their implementation and hypothesized that the biggest emotional effects would occur during implementation. In Study 1, participants (N = 106) saw a negative image and generated either just positive reappraisals (GEN ++) or positive and negative reappraisals (GEN +-). They then saw the image again and implemented either their positive reappraisals (for the GEN ++ and half of the GEN +- trials) or negative reappraisals (for the other half of GEN +- trials). Although there were small and significant changes in emotion when generating reappraisals, the robust changes in emotion that are typically observed during reappraisal occurred during implementation. In Study 2 (N = 130), we directly replicated the findings from Study 1 and demonstrated that this small emotional effect from just generating reappraisals was not due to discounting the forthcoming implementation goal. In summary, for the first time, we successfully dissociated reappraisal generation from implementation and show that the biggest emotional effects occur during implementation. We discuss the implications of these findings for understanding emotion regulation, the neural underpinnings of reappraisal, and the conditions for reappraisal success in clinical contexts. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42761-022-00129-2.

Maternal socioeconomic disadvantage, neural function during volitional emotion regulation, and parenting.

The transition to becoming a mother involves numerous emotional challenges, and the ability to effectively keep negative emotions in check is critical for parenting. Evidence suggests that experiencing socioeconomic disadvantage interferes with parenting adaptations and alters neural processes related to emotion regulation. The present study examined whether socioeconomic disadvantage is associated with diminished neural activation while mothers engaged in volitional (i.e., purposeful) emotion regulation. 59 mothers, at an average of 4 months postpartum, underwent fMRI scanning and completed the Emotion Regulation Task (ERT). When asked to regulate emotions using reappraisal (i.e., Reappraise condition; reframing stimuli in order to decrease negative emotion), mothers with lower income-to-needs ratio exhibited dampened neural activation in the dorsolateral and ventrolateral PFC, middle frontal and middle temporal gyrus, and caudate. Without explicit instructions to down-regulate (i.e., Maintain condition), mothers experiencing lower income also exhibited dampened response in regulatory areas, including the middle frontal and middle temporal gyrus and caudate. Blunted middle frontal gyrus activation across both Reappraise and Maintain conditions was associated with reduced maternal sensitivity during a mother-child interaction task. Results of the present study demonstrate the influence of socioeconomic disadvantage on prefrontal engagement during emotion regulation, which may have downstream consequences for maternal behaviors.

Prosocial correlates of transformative experiences at secular multi-day mass gatherings.

Humans have long sought experiences that transcend or change their sense of self. By weakening boundaries between the self and others, such transformative experiences may lead to enduring changes in moral orientation. Here we investigated the psychological nature and prosocial correlates of transformative experiences by studying participants before (n = 600), during (n = 1217), 0-4 weeks after (n = 1866), and 6 months after (n = 710) they attended a variety of secular, multi-day mass gatherings in the US and UK. Observations at 6 field studies and 22 online followup studies spanning 5 years showed that self-reported transformative experiences at mass gatherings were common, increased over time, and were characterized by feelings of universal connectedness and new perceptions of others. Participants' circle of moral regard expanded with every passing day onsite-an effect partially mediated by transformative experience and feelings of universal connectedness. Generosity was remarkably high across sites but did not change over time. Immediately and 6 months following event attendance, self-reported transformative experience persisted and predicted both generosity (directly) and moral expansion (indirectly). These findings highlight the prosocial qualities of transformative experiences at secular mass gatherings and suggest such experiences may be associated with lasting changes in moral orientation.

Competitive interactions between cognitive reappraisal and mentalizing.

To better understand how cognitive context can impact emotion regulation through cognitive reappraisal, we evaluated the effects of an additional mentalizing instruction on reappraisal. This manipulation models an existing therapeutic technique in which a client is instructed to imagine advising a friend in a similar situation. We examined the effects of this manipulation on self-reported affect and difficulty as well as fMRI measures of neural function. We hypothesized that the mentalizing context would facilitate the cognitive processing and performance of reappraisal due to the engagement of common neurocognitive resources across these processes. We trained participants to reappraise negative pictures using reinterpretation, and crossed mentalizing with reappraisal in a within-subjects factorial design. Self-report results indicated that the mentalizing instruction did not impact reappraisal performance. We did, however, identify neural interactions between mentalizing and reappraisal. The particular patterns of interaction suggested that reappraisal processing may have been dominant and mentalizing processing diminished when both were instructed. Overall, our findings suggested that mentalizing and reappraisal did engage shared neurocognitive resources, but this overlap resulted in competition between these processes rather than facilitation. We discuss potential mechanisms and identify directions for future research. This study was preregistered at https://osf.io/ym28u/.

Cognitive Reappraisal Experimental Task: Replica in Mexican University Students

Background and Objective: Depression and anxiety, the most common mental disorders, have had a recent increase in prevalence in university students. The use of emotion regulation strategies and regulation success, which is predictive of mental health, have been primarily assessed through self-report, especially in Latin American samples. The present study sought to test a computerized emotion regulation experimental task in Mexican students samples. Method: Two Mexican samples of undergraduate and graduate students (Sample I: n = 49 and Sample II: n = 40) completed an experimental task (in-house Mexican Spanish translation). Participants were asked to decrease negative affect (reappraise) or react naturally in response to negative or neutral images and to selfreport affect immediately after. Results: We found a significant decrease in negative affect when adopting a reappraisal strategy (decrease instruction) in the experimental task when participants were given verbal training instructions. However, these differences were not as strong when they were given in written form. Conclusions: Given that most disorders begin in the early decades of life and the current high prevalence of depression and anxiety in university students, as well the importance of emotion regulation in the onset or prevention of psychopathology, it is important to study these strategies worldwide. The current study presents evidence of reduced negative affect after using reappraisal during an experimental task in Mexican university students. Further, our results highlight the importance of matching processes and replicating results in different cultural contexts.

Antecedentes y objetivo La depresión y la ansiedad son los trastornos mentales más comunes y recientemente han aumentado en estudiantes universitarios. El uso y éxito de estrategias de regulación emocional como predictoras de la salud mental ha sido previamente evaluada principalmente a través de autoinformes, especialmente en muestras latinoamericanas. El presente estudio buscó examinar una tarea experimental computarizada de regulación emocional en muestras de estudiantes mexicanos. Método: Dos muestras mexicanas de estudiantes de pregrado y posgrado (Muestra I: n = 49 y Muestra II: n = 40) completaron una tarea experimental (traducción al español mexicano). Se pidió a los participantes disminuir (reapreciar) el afecto negativo o reaccionar de forma natural en respuesta a imágenes negativas y neutrales e inmediatamente después informar su afecto negativo. Resultados: Encontramos una disminución significativa en el afecto negativo al utilizar la reapreciación (instrucción disminuya) en la tarea experimental cuando los participantes recibieron instrucciones de entrenamiento verbal. Sin embargo, estas diferencias no fueron tan fuertes cuando las instrucciones se dieron por escrito. Conclusiones: Dado que la mayoría de los trastornos inician en las primeras décadas de vida aunado a la alta prevalencia de depresión y ansiedad en estudiantes universitarios, así como la importancia de la regulación emocional en la aparición o prevención de la psicopatología es primordial estudiar estas estrategias a nivel mundial. El estudio presenta evidencia de la reducción del afecto negativo después de utilizar la reapreciación mediante una tarea experimental en estudiantes universitarios mexicanos. Además, se destacan la importancia de igualar procesos y replicar los resultados en diferentes contextos culturales.

The Future of Women in Psychological Science.

There has been extensive discussion about gender gaps in representation and career advancement in the sciences. However, psychological science itself has yet to be the focus of discussion or systematic review, despite our field's investment in questions of equity, status, well-being, gender bias, and gender disparities. In the present article, we consider 10 topics relevant for women's career advancement in psychological science. We focus on issues that have been the subject of empirical study, discuss relevant evidence within and outside of psychological science, and draw on established psychological theory and social-science research to begin to chart a path forward. We hope that better understanding of these issues within the field will shed light on areas of existing gender gaps in the discipline and areas where positive change has happened, and spark conversation within our field about how to create lasting change to mitigate remaining gender differences in psychological science.

Affective brain patterns as multivariate neural correlates of cardiovascular disease risk.

This study tested whether brain activity patterns evoked by affective stimuli relate to individual differences in an indicator of pre-clinical atherosclerosis: carotid artery intima-media thickness (CA-IMT). Adults (aged 30-54 years) completed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) tasks that involved viewing three sets of affective stimuli. Two sets included facial expressions of emotion, and one set included neutral and unpleasant images from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS). Cross-validated, multivariate and machine learning models showed that individual differences in CA-IMT were partially predicted by brain activity patterns evoked by unpleasant IAPS images, even after accounting for age, sex and known cardiovascular disease risk factors. CA-IMT was also predicted by brain activity patterns evoked by angry and fearful faces from one of the two stimulus sets of facial expressions, but this predictive association did not persist after accounting for known cardiovascular risk factors. The reliability (internal consistency) of brain activity patterns evoked by affective stimuli may have constrained their prediction of CA-IMT. Distributed brain activity patterns could comprise affective neural correlates of pre-clinical atherosclerosis; however, the interpretation of such correlates may depend on their psychometric properties, as well as the influence of other cardiovascular risk factors and specific affective cues.

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.

Emotion regulation.

Emotion regulation (ER) refers to attempts to influence emotions in ourselves or others. Over the past several decades, ER has become a popular topic across many subdisciplines within psychology. One framework that has helped to organize work on ER is the process model of ER, which distinguishes 5 families of strategies defined by when they impact the emotion generation process. The process model embeds these ER strategies in stages in which a need for regulation is identified, a strategy is selected and implemented, and monitoring occurs to track success. Much of the research to date has focused on a strategy called cognitive reappraisal, which involves changing how one thinks about a situation to influence one's emotional response. Reappraisal is thought to be generally effective and adaptive, but there are important qualifications. In this article, we use reappraisal as an example to illustrate how we might consider 4 interrelated issues: (a) the consequences of using ER, either when instructed or spontaneous; (b) how ER success and frequency are shaped by individual and environmental determinants; (c) the psychological and neurobiological mechanisms that make ER possible; and (d) interventions that might improve how well and how often people use ER. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Cognitive Reappraisal of Negative Emotional Images in Borderline Personality Disorder: Content Analysis, Perceived Effectiveness, and Diagnostic Specificity.

Individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD) report using cognitive reappraisal less often than healthy individuals despite the long-term benefits of the emotion regulation strategy on emotional stability. Individuals with BPD, mixed anxiety and/or depressive disorders (MAD), and healthy controls (HC) completed an experimental task to investigate the tactics contained in cognitive reappraisal statements vocalized for high and low emotional intensity photographs. Self-reported effectiveness after using cognitive reappraisal to decrease negative emotions was also evaluated. Although BPD and MAD used a similar number of cognitive reappraisal tactics, they perceived themselves as less effective at reducing their negative emotions compared to HC. During cognitive reappraisal, BPD and MAD uttered fewer words versus HC, while BPD uttered fewer words versus MAD. Results suggest that individuals with BPD and MAD are less fluent and perceive themselves as less effective than HC when using cognitive reappraisal to lower negative emotions regardless of stimulus intensity.

Humor Improves Women's but Impairs Men's Iowa Gambling Task Performance.

The Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) is a popular method for examining real-life decision-making. Research has shown gender related differences in performance, in that men consistently outperform women. It has been suggested that these performance differences are related to decreased emotional control in women compared to men. Given the likely role of emotion in these gender differences, in the present study, we examine the effect of a humor induction on IGT performance and whether the effect of humor is moderated by gender. IGT performance and parameters from the Expectancy Valence Model (EVM) were measured in 68 university students (34 men; mean age 22.02, SD = 4.3 and 34 women; mean age 22.3, SD = 4.1) during a 100 trial-IGT task. Participants were exposed to a brief video before each of the IGT decisions available; one half of the samples (17 men and 17 women) was exposed to 100 humor videos, while the other half was exposed to 100 non-humor videos during the task. We observed a significant interaction between gender and humor, such that under humor, women's performance during the last block (trials 80-100) improved (compared to women under non-humor), whereas men's performance during the last block was worse (compared to men under non-humor). Consistent with previous work, under non-humor, men outperformed women in the last block. Lastly, our EVM results show that humor impacts the learning mechanisms of decision-making differently in men and women. Humor impaired men's ability to acquire knowledge about the payoff structure of the decks, and as a consequence, they were stuck in suboptimal performance. On the other hand, humor facilitated women's ability to explore and to learn from experience, improving performance. These findings deepen our understanding of the mechanisms underlying IGT decision-making and differential effects of humor in men and women.

"A" for Effort: Rewarding Effortful Retrieval Attempts Improves Learning From General Knowledge Errors in Women.

Previous research has shown that the prospect of attaining a reward can promote task-engagement, up-regulate attention toward reward-relevant information, and facilitate enhanced encoding of new information into declarative memory. However, past research on reward-based enhancement of declarative memory has focused primarily on paradigms in which rewards are contingent upon accurate responses. Yet, findings from test-enhanced learning show that making errors can also be useful for learning if those errors represent effortful retrieval attempts and are followed by corrective feedback. Here, we used a challenging general knowledge task to examine the effects of explicitly rewarding retrieval effort, defined as a semantically plausible answer to a question (referenced to a semantic knowledge database www.mangelslab.org/bknorms), regardless of response accuracy. In particular, we asked whether intermittent rewards following effortful incorrect responses facilitated learning from corrective feedback as measured by incidental learning outcomes on a 24-48 h delayed retest. Given that effort-contingent extrinsic rewards represent the intersection between an internal locus of control and competency, we compared participants in this "Effort" group to three other groups in a between-subjects design: a Luck group that framed rewards as related to participant-chosen lottery numbers (reward with internal control, not competence-based), a random Award group that framed rewards as computer generated (no control, not competence-based), and a Control group with no reward, but matched on all other task features. Both men and women in the Effort group showed increased self-reports of concentration and positive feelings following the receipt of rewards, as well as subjective effort on the retest, compared to the Control group. However, only women additionally exhibited performance benefits of effort framing on error correction. These benefits were found for both rewarded and non-rewarded trials, but only for correction of low confidence errors, suggesting that effort-contingent rewards produced task-level changes in motivation to learn less familiar information in women, rather than trial-level influences in encoding or consolidation. The Luck and Award groups did not demonstrate significant motivational or behavioral benefits for either gender. These results suggest that both reward context and gender are important factors contributing to the effectiveness of rewards as tools to enhance learning from errors.

Welcome to Wonderland? A Population Study of Intimate Experiences and Safe Sex at a Transformational Mass Gathering (Burning Man).

Transformational festivals are socially immersive artistic mass gatherings that are said to promote a strong feeling of belonging and experiences of personal transformation. The purposes of the present study were (1) to investigate the social and intimate experiences of Burning Man participants and (2) to study the factors predicting safe sex practices in the context of that transformational festival. The study was based on data from two consecutive cycles (2013 and 2014) of the yearly post-event online survey done in collaboration with the Burning Man Project. Participants consisted of people who attended the event (N = 19,512). The results were weighted based on the sociodemographic characteristics of the population. A typology of social and intimate experiences was created using a k-means cluster analysis. Predictors of having had unprotected sex with someone met during the event were identified using a nested logistic regression. Five profiles of social and intimate experiences were identified. Profiles with high levels of emotionally and physically intimate experiences were associated with a strong feeling of belonging and a high proportion of personal transformation. Predictive analyses showed that unprotected sex was mainly predicted by variables associated with one of three factors: (1) a lower lever of preparation and practice in using protection, (2) sex education and/or subcultures, and (3) the perceived costs and benefits associated with protection. The results also indirectly suggest a positive effect of the event on safe sex. Implications in terms of public health intervention are discussed.

Effects of incidental positive emotion and cognitive reappraisal on affective responses to negative stimuli.

Previous studies have identified two powerful ways to regulate emotional responses to a stressor: experiencing incidental positive emotions and using cognitive reappraisal to reframe the stressor. Several cognitive and motivational theories of positive emotion support the formulation that incidental positive emotions may facilitate cognitive reappraisal. To test the separate and interacting effects of positive emotions and cognitive reappraisal, we first adapted an established picture-based reappraisal paradigm by interspersing blocks of positive emotion inducing and neutral pictures. Across two pre-registered studies (Studies 1, 2), reappraisal effectively decreased self-reported negative emotions and increased self-reported positive emotions; however, experiencing incidental positive emotions did not facilitate reappraisal success. In another preregistered study (Study 3), we employed a more powerful positive emotion induction via virtual reality (VR), used a social stress anticipation task, and instructed participants to reappraise the anticipated stressor positively. Although there was a robust effect of the positive emotion induction (relative to the neutral induction) on feeling more positive emotions throughout stress anticipation, the results again indicated that incidental positive emotions did not facilitate cognitive reappraisal. We propose that incidental positive emotions and cognitive reappraisal may constitute separate pathways of influence when regulating one's responses to negative events.