Negative mood induction in children: An examination across mood, physiological, and cognitive variables.

Experimental mood induction procedures are commonly used in studies of children's emotions, although research on their effectiveness is lacking. Studies that support their effectiveness report sample-level changes in self-reported affect from pre- to post-induction, and a subset of children who do not self-report expected changes in affect (i.e., "nonresponders"). Given children's limited abilities to self-report their emotions, it is critical to know whether these paradigms also shift physiological and social-cognitive indices of emotion. We hypothesized increases in physiological reactivity and accuracy for discerning facial expressions of negative emotions from pre- to post-induction and smaller increases for nonresponders, Children (N = 80; 7- to 12-year-olds) completed a facial emotion recognition task and had an electrocardiogram recorded to index high-frequency heart rate variability (HF-HRV) before and after a mood induction procedure. The mood induction involved watching a 3-min sad film clip while attending to their feelings. In the sample overall, from pre- to post-mood induction, children self-reported significantly sadder affect, displayed significant increases in HF-HRV, and displayed significant increases in accuracy of recognizing facial emotion expressions congruent with the mood induced. One quarter (25%) of the sample did not self-report expected increases in sad affect. Contrary to expectations, responders and nonresponders did not differ in mood-induced changes in physiological reactivity or emotion recognition accuracy. These findings support that mood inductions are efficacious in shifting not only children's self-reported affect but also underlying physiological and social-cognitive processes. Furthermore, they are an effective methodology for research questions related to underlying processes even in self-reported nonresponders.

Do you feel up when you go up? A pilot study of a virtual reality manic-like mood induction paradigm.

OBJECTIVES: In order to understand the working mechanisms of mania, it is necessary to perform studies during the onset of manic (-like) mood states. However, clinical mania is difficult to examine experimentally. A viable method to study manic mood like states is mood induction, but mood induction tasks thus far show variable effectiveness. METHODS: In this pilot study, a new paradigm to induce mood through virtual reality (VR) is examined. Both state characteristics, namely changes in emotion, and trait characteristics, such as high and low scores on the hypomanic personality scale (HPS), were measured in 65 students. These students participated in either a neutral VR mood induction or an activating VR mood induction in which excitement, goal directedness, and tension (being aspects of mania) were induced. All participants performed a risk-taking behavioural task, Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART). RESULTS: The experimental VR task induced excitement and tension. In participants with higher sensitivity to hypomanic personality (HPS), irritation increased in response to activation whereas it decreased in the low HPS group, and excitement increased more steeply in the low HPS group. There were no effects on the behavioural task. CONCLUSIONS: The VR task is effective in inducing relevant state aspects of hypomania and is suitable as a paradigm for future experimental studies. Activation of dual affective states (excitement and tension) is an essential aspect in manic-like mood induction paradigms.

Assessing Children's Autonomic Nervous System Activity During Structured Tasks: A Feasibility and Reliability Study in Ghana.

The significance of physiological regulation in relation to behavioral and emotional regulation is well documented, but primarily in economically advantaged contexts. Few studies have been conducted in low- and middle-income countries. We investigated the feasibility and reliability of measuring autonomic nervous system (ANS) activity and behavior during challenge tasks in 30 children aged 8-10 years in Ghana during two visits, 1 week apart. Completeness of ANS data ranged from 80% to 100% across all tasks. There was low-to-moderate test-retest reliability of video mood induction (VMI) emotion ratings and balloon analog risk task (BART) pumps (r = 0.34-0.52). VMI elicited higher targeted emotion ratings in Visit 2 than Visit 1. Respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) was higher, and pre-ejection period (PEP) was longer at Visit 2 than Visit 1 for baseline and both tasks. RSA was higher at baseline than during the VMI anger scene at Visit 1, whereas PEP was shorter at baseline than during all VMI emotion scenes at Visit 2. RSA was higher at baseline than during BART at both visits. In conclusion, ANS data collection within evocative and arousing challenge tasks was feasible in Ghana, and the tasks were generally reliable and effective in eliciting target emotions and risk-taking behavior in this sample.

Unlocking the past: efficacy of guided self-compassion and benefit-focused online interventions for managing negative personal memories.

Positive reappraisal strategies have been found to reduce negative affect following the recall of negative personal events. This study examined the restorative effect of two mood-repair instructions (self-compassion vs benefit-focused reappraisal) and a control condition with no instructions following a negative Mood Induction Procedure by using the guided recall of a negative autobiographical event. A total of 112 university students participated in the online study (81% women, Mage: 21.0 years). Immediately following the negative memory recall, participants were randomised to each condition [(self-compassion: n = 36, benefit-focused: n = 39) or a control condition (n = 37)]. Repeated measures ANOVAs 3 (Repair condition) × 3 (Time of mood assessment: pre-recall, post-recall, post-regulation) showed that, as expected, negative mood (sadness, shame, and guilt) worsened significantly after the guided recall in all groups (p < .001). After the mood-repair intervention, participants in the self-compassion and benefit-focused conditions showed a significant reduction in negative mood (p < .019), while such improvement was not observed in the control group. Self-compassion and benefit-focused reappraisal functioned similarly as mood repair strategies after experiencing negative affect induced by the recall of negative personal memories. Implications in the context of autobiographical memory biases are discussed.

Social media's influence on momentary emotion based on people's initial mood: an experimental design.

Can you think of a meme that made you laugh or a political post that made you angry? These examples illustrate how social media use (SMU) impacts how people feel. Similarly, how people feel when they initiate SMU may impact the emotional effects of SMU. Someone feeling happy may feel more positively during SMU, whereas someone feeling sad may feel more negatively. Using an experimental design, we examined whether following SMU, those in a happy mood would experience increases in positive affect (PA) and those in a sad mood would experience increases in negative affect (NA). A large sample of college students (N = 703) were randomly assigned to a happy, sad, or neutral mood induction before SMU. PA and NA were assessed at baseline, post-mood induction, and after SMU. Contrary to hypotheses, after SMU, people in happy moods experienced decreases in PA, and those in sad moods experienced decreases in NA, reflecting SMU having a dampening effect on emotions. PA and NA were significantly lower after SMU compared to baseline and did not vary by condition. How young adults feel when they log onto SMU matters in understanding how SMU impacts PA and NA, but on average, emotional experiences are dampened.

Autobiographical Script-Driven Imagery Has No Detectable Effect on Emotion Regulation in Healthy Individuals.

INTRODUCTION: Emotion regulation (ER), the ability to actively modulate one's own emotion reactions, likely depends on the individual's current emotional state. Here, we investigated whether negative emotions induced by an interpersonal autobiographic script affect the neuronal processes underlying ER. METHODS: Twenty healthy participants were recruited and underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during performance of distancing, a specific ER strategy, while viewing emotionally arousing pictures. Participants were instructed to either naturally experience ("permit" condition) or to actively downregulate ("regulate" condition) their emotional responses to the presented stimuli. Before each of the 4 runs in total, a neutral or negative autobiographical audio script was presented. The negative script comprised an emotionally negative event from childhood or adolescence that represented either emotional abuse or emotional neglect. The second event comprised an everyday neutral situation. We aimed at identifying the neural correlates of ER and their modulation by script-driven imagery. RESULTS: fMRI analyses testing for greater responses in the "regulate" than the "permit" condition replicated previously reported neural correlates of ER in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the right inferior parietal lobule. A significant ER effect was also observed in the left orbitofrontal cortex. In the amygdala, we found greater responses in the "permit" compared to the "regulate" condition. We did not observe a significant modulation of the ER effects in any of these regions by the negative emotional state induced by autobiographical scripts. Bayesian statistics confirmed the absence of such modulations by providing marginal evidence for null effects. DISCUSSION: While we replicated previously reported neural correlates of ER, we found no evidence for an effect of mood induction with individualized autobiographical scripts on the neural processes underlying ER in healthy participants.

Evaluating the role of negative affect and negative interpretation biases in emotional eating behavior.

OBJECTIVE: The study of emotional eating, or (over)eating in response to emotions, may inform transdiagnostic interventions for eating pathology. Prior work has focused on the role of negative affect in promoting emotional eating. The present study sought to extend this work through examining the role of cognitive biases. METHOD: Women who self-reported (n = 50) and did not self-report (n = 40) emotional eating completed self-report questionnaires of negative affect and negative interpretation biases, an implicit measure of cognitive bias, and a behavioral assay of emotional eating involving an ad lib test meal following a stress induction task. RESULTS: The emotional eating group endorsed elevated trait negative affect, explicit shame biases, and implicit negative biases compared to controls. In addition, state negative affect increased after the stress induction task, and the emotional eating group endorsed greater state negative affect before and after the task and consumed more food following the stress induction. Only explicit cognitive shame biases demonstrated significant indirect effects in the association between group and food consumption. Specifically, elevated explicit shame biases were positively associated with amount of food consumed for the emotional eating group. DISCUSSION: Future research should examine whether interventions that target cognitive biases related to shame reduce emotional eating. PUBLIC SIGNIFICANCE: Individuals with emotional eating consumed more food than controls following a stress induction. Explicit shame cognitive biases were positively associated with amount of food consumed for the emotional eating group. Shame cogntiive biases may be fruitful targets for reducing emotional eating.

The effect of an induced negative mood on the updating of affective information.

Updating is an important executive function that is vital for the attainment of goals such as cognitive tasks, daily activities, and the regulation of emotion. The ability to update affective content in working memory is said to be influenced by mood. However, little is known regarding the influences of mood on the valence of affective content. We hypothesized that first, a negative mood would impair the updating of affective information. Second, this impeding impact would be weaker for the updating of negative information due to the mood congruence effect. Sixty-three Russian-speaking participants were recruited for the experiment. Half of the participants were induced into a negative mood by negative pictures; the other half were presented with neutral pictures. All participants performed the affective 2-back task before and after mood induction. The results showed that negative mood impaired the accuracy rates of updating. However, the mood congruence effect was not observed in the updating of positive and negative materials. We recommend that more experiments be conducted with varied affective stimuli.

Improving interoception and self-disgust in the treatment of patients with anorexia nervosa.

Anorexia nervosa (AN) is a mental disorder in which sufficient evidence points towards the presence of a high level of disturbed interoception and self-disgust. High arousal mood induction is a therapeutic technique that helps improve a patient's interoceptive capacities. With some adjustments to this technique such as adding a challenging behavior that induces a "flow" state or a mindfulness component such as in mindful awareness in body-oriented therapy (MABT), it is expected that patients with AN may benefit from an integrative treatment strategy that helps them improve their symptoms of high self-disgust and low interoception.

Elated or sad mood induction affects the attention of patients with a bipolar disorder less than that of patients with a depressive disorder.

Introduction: The role of acute mood states as mediating factors in cognitive impairment in patients with mania or depression is not sufficiently clear. Similarly, the extent to which cognitive impairment is trait or state-specific remains an open question. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the effect of a mood-induction on attention in patients with an affective disorder.Methods: Twenty-two depressed bipolar patients, 10 manic bipolar patients, 17 with a depressive episode (MDE), and 24 healthy controls performed the Attention-Network-Test (ANT). In a within-participants design, elated and sad moods were induced by an autobiographic recall and measured on a self-report scale. Subsequently, participants performed the ANT again.Results: The modulating effect of the elated mood induction on attention was small. Only the MDE group displayed moderate improvements in selective attention and tonic alertness. Surprisingly, after the sad mood induction, patients with MDE improved moderately on phasic and tonic alertness. Phasic alertness was also enhanced in patients with mania. Finally, after the mood induction, patients with MDE showed the largest variability in attentional performance.Conclusions: Results showed only small effects of mood induction on attention. This supports the view that attention deficits reflect trait variables.

Anhedonia modulates the effects of positive mood induction on reward-related brain activation.

Blunted activation in the reward circuitry has been associated with anhedonia, the inability to experience pleasure in previously rewarding activities. In healthy individuals, reward-related activation has been found to be modulated by acute contextual factors such as induced positive mood. Accordingly, blunted reward response in anhedonia might involve a failure to appropriately modulate reward-related activation as a function of context. To test this hypothesis, 29 participants (19 females, mean age of 24.14 ±â€¯4.61, age range 18-34), with a wide range of anhedonic symptoms, underwent functional MRI while anticipating and receiving monetary rewards, before and after a positive mood induction. Change in neural activation from before to after mood induction was quantified, and effects of anhedonia were investigated through whole-brain, ROI, and functional connectivity analyses. Contrary to hypotheses, results indicated that during reward anticipation (but not receipt), nucleus accumbens activation decreased while its connectivity with the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex increased, following positive mood induction. Critically, anhedonia modulated both effects. The unexpected finding of decreased activation to reward cues following positive mood induction is compelling as it aligns with a prominent behavioral model of the effect of positive mood on exploration of rewarding and neutral stimuli. Furthermore, the modulation of this effect by anhedonia suggests that it may be a key process altered in anhedonia.

Distress intolerance moderation of motivated attention to cannabis and negative stimuli after induced stress among cannabis users: an ERP study.

Prevalence of cannabis use is increasing, but many regular users do not develop cannabis use disorder (CUD); thus, CUD risk identification among current users is vital for targeted intervention development. Existing data suggest that high distress intolerance (DI), an individual difference reflective of the ability to tolerate negative affect, may be linked to CUD, but no studies have tested possible neurophysiological mechanisms. Increased motivated attentional processing of cannabis and negative emotional stimuli as indexed by neurophysiology [i.e. the late positive potential (LPP)], particularly during acute stress, may contribute to CUD among high DI users. Frequent cannabis users with high (n = 61) and low DI (n = 44) viewed cannabis, negative, and matched neutral images during electroencephalography (EEG) recording before and after a laboratory stressor. Cannabis cue-elicited modulation of the 1000- to 3000-milliseconds LPP was larger in high DI users at post-stressor only, although the effect was only robust in the 1000- to 2000-milliseconds window. Further, modulation magnitude in the high DI group covaried with stress-relief craving and some CUD indices in the 400- to 1000-milliseconds and 1000- to 3000-milliseconds windows, respectively. No significant effects of DI on negative stimuli-elicited LPP modulation were found, although inverse associations with some CUD indices were observed. Finally, exploratory analyses revealed some evidence for DI moderation of the relation between subjective stressor reactivity and negative stimuli-elicited LPP modulation such that greater stressor reactivity was associated with blunted versus enhanced modulation in the high and low DI groups, respectively. Negative and cannabis stimuli-elicited LPP modulation appear to index distinct, CUD-relevant neural processes in high DI cannabis users.

The association of conformity to feminine norms with women's food consumption after a negative mood induction.

The current study examined the relation between women's food intake and their conformity to feminine norms after a negative mood induction, as well as the potential moderating role of expressive suppression. Female participants (N = 197) watched a sad movie clip, partook in a taste test in which they consumed potato chips and chocolate, and completed a survey with questions designed to assess conformity to feminine norms and the use of expressive suppression in daily life. Regression analyses revealed that increased conformity to the feminine norm of modesty was associated with reduced food intake, whereas conformity to the feminine norms of thinness and appearance were not. Expressive suppression did not moderate any of these relations. Overall, this study affirms the importance of understanding how overarching cultural norms such as femininity influence women's food consumption.

The use of a positive mood induction video-clip to target eating behaviour in people with bulimia nervosa or binge eating disorder: An experimental study.

Recent theoretical models and empirical research have indicated that momentary negative affect increases the likelihood of binge eating episodes for individuals with bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder. However, relatively little research has explored the potential for positive mood to serve a protective effect in reducing the likelihood of overeating behaviour in bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder. The current study included 30 women with bulimia nervosa or binge eating disorder in a within-subjects crossover design. Following exposure to a video designed to induce food craving, we found that a positive mood vodcast was associated with significantly lower levels of negative mood and food consumption in a taste test meal, when compared to a neutral vodcast (p = 0.002). These findings support a role for decreasing negative mood in reducing the likelihood of binge eating behaviour in women with bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder.

Change in drawing placement: A measure of change in mood state reflective of hemispheric lateralization of emotion.

The Valence Hypothesis of cerebral lateralization of emotion suggests greater right hemisphere activation during negative mood and greater left hemisphere activation during positive mood. This can manifest as visual field attentional bias. Here, study participants completed an assessment of current mood state (PANAS) and made a drawing (Drawing 1). To induce positive or negative mood, participants played a game; then, the winner read a script depicting a positive interpersonal interaction and the loser read a script depicting a negative interpersonal interaction. Participants then drew a second picture (Drawing 2) and completed the PANAS. We hypothesized that the game outcome would change current mood state and hemispheric activation, which would be reflected in drawing placement. The placement of Drawing 2 moved right for winners and left for losers. Winners experienced a greater increase in positive affect from Time 1 to Time 2 than losers and had decreased negative affect from Time 1. Losers had decreased positive affect from Time 1 and had a greater increase in negative affect from Time 1 to Time 2 than winners. Our results suggest that change in current mood state may be objectively observed by evaluating hemispatial bias reflective of brain hemispheric activation with drawings.

Mood effects on attentional control: a preregistered replication study and critical analysis.

In a widely cited paper, Jefferies et al. (2008) report a study in which they manipulated participants' mood and examined the effects of this manipulation on their performance on the Attentional Blink task. Their results revealed an interaction between emotional valence and arousal: attentional control of participants who experienced a negative mood with low arousal (i.e. sadness) was best, whereas it was worst for participants who experienced a negative mood with high arousal (i.e. anxiety). Performance for participants who were in a positive mood, either with low arousal (i.e. calmness) or high arousal (i.e. happiness) had intermediate scores. In this study, I examined the replicability of this effect and performed additional analyses to investigate the extent to which this effect is due to perceptual or attentional processes and to examine the role of distraction on AB performance. Importantly, the results showed that the crucial interaction between emotional valence and arousal did not reach significance. This could be due a diversity of factors that are addressed in the discussion.

Non-response to sad mood induction: implications for emotion research.

Experimental induction of sad mood states is a mainstay of laboratory research on affect and cognition, mood regulation, and mood disorders. Typically, the success of such mood manipulations is reported as a statistically significant pre- to post-induction change in the self-rated intensity of the target affect. The present commentary was motivated by an unexpected finding in one of our studies concerning the response rate to a well-validated sad mood induction. Using the customary statistical approach, we found a significant mean increase in self-rated sadness intensity with a moderate effect size, verifying the "success" of the mood induction. However, that "success" masked that, between one-fifth and about one-third of our samples (adolescents who had histories of childhood-onset major depressive disorder and healthy controls) reported absolutely no sadness in response to the mood induction procedure. We consider implications of our experience for emotion research by (1) commenting upon the typically overlooked phenomenon of nonresponse, (2) suggesting changes in reporting practices regarding mood induction success, and (3) outlining future directions to help scientists determine why some subjects do not respond to experimental mood induction.

Dispositional self-compassion and responses to mood challenge in people at risk for depressive relapse/recurrence.

This paper explores the relationship between dispositional self-compassion and cognitive emotion regulation capacities in individuals with a history of depression. Study 1 (n = 403) established that self-compassion was associated with increased use of positive and decreased use of negative strategies, with small to medium sized correlations. Study 2 (n = 68) was an experimental study examining the association between dispositional self-compassion, use of cognitive emotion regulation strategies, and changes in mood and self-devaluation in participants exposed to a negative mood induction followed by mood repair (mindfulness, rumination, silence). Individuals with higher levels of dispositional self-compassion showed greater mood recovery after mood induction, and less self-devaluation across the experimental procedure, independent of their mood-repair condition or habitual forms of cognitive emotion regulation. These results suggest that self-compassion is associated with more adaptive responses to mood challenges in individuals with a history of recurrent depression.

Inducing negative affect using film clips with general and eating disorder-related content.

The aim of the present study was to select appropriate film clips with a general vs. eating disorder (ED)-related content to induce negative affect. More specifically, the study examined the subjective emotional experience (valence, arousal, anxiety, induction of somatic symptoms, and ability to control reactions during film clips) of Greek-Cypriot university students (N = 79) in response to three types of film clips: general unpleasant, ED-specific unpleasant, and emotionally neutral. In addition, the study aimed to compare the emotional reactions to the aforementioned clips between two groups of participants differing on their risk for ED (high vs. low). Preliminary results indicate the clips with general content ("The Champ") and with ED-specific content ("Binge eating") that are most effective in inducing negative affect and differentiating between risk groups. These clips provide an effective method for emotion induction that can be used for assessing the emotional experience of individuals with ED symptoms, since their emotional experience is significantly implicated in the development and maintenance of their symptoms (Merwin, Clin Psychol Sci Pract 18(3):208-214, 2011).Level of evidence No level of evidence, Experimental Study.

The Effects of Positive Versus Negative Mood States on Attentional Processes During Exposure to Erotica.

The relationship between emotions and sexual functioning has been documented since early sex research. Among other effects, emotions are expected to impact sexual response by shaping individuals' attention to sexual cues; yet, this assumption has not been tested. This study aimed to investigate whether attentional processes to sexual cues are impacted by state emotions, and whether the processes impacted by emotions relate to subjective sexual arousal to a sex film clip. A total of 52 men and 73 women were randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions: (1) a negative mood induction condition (sadness as dominant emotion), (2) a positive mood induction condition (amusement as dominant emotion), and a (3) neutral/control condition. After mood induction, participants were exposed to a sex film clip while their focus of visual attention was measured using an eye tracker. Three areas of interest (AOI) were considered within the sex clip: background (non-sexual cues), body interaction, and genital interaction. Self-reported attention, thoughts during the sex clip, percent dwell time, and pupil size to AOI were considered as attentional markers. Findings revealed that the attentional processes were not impacted by the mood conditions. Instead, gender effects were found. While men increased their visual attention to the background area of the film clip, women increased attention to the genital area. Also, sexual arousal thoughts during exposure to the sex clip were consistently related to subjective sexual arousal regardless of the momentary emotional state. Findings add to the literature by showing that men and women process the sexual components of a stimulus differently and by challenging the assumption that emotions shape attention to sexual cues.