The neurophysiological effects of detached and positive reappraisal during the regulation of self-conscious emotions

Abstract

Background: While cognitive reappraisal represents a promising emotion regulation strategy in regulating basic emotions, little experimental research has investigated its efficacy in reducing self-conscious emotions such as shame and guilt.

Objective: The present study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of detached reappraisal and positive reappraisal in regulating feelings of shame and guilt, and also compared the effectiveness of these two strategies using behavioral and event-related potentials.

Method: Thirty-nine participants grouped either in positive reappraisal or detached reappraisal condition were informed to advise the decider to perform a dot-estimation task. Participants were also informed that the payment of the decider would be reduced if he/she adopted the wrong advice provided by them.

Result: The behavioral results demonstrated that both regulation strategies reduced shame and guilt when compared to the observation stage. We also observed a phenomenon (absent during the regulation of shame) where regulating guilt resulted in a higher parietal P3 amplitude, a component related to negative experiences, compared to the observation phase in the detached reappraisal group.

Conclusion: The results demonstrated that both regulation strategies were able to regulate self-conscious emotions (shame, guilt) effectively. The findings of this study enhance our understanding of the neurophysiological effects of different regulation strategies on self-conscious emotions.

Keywords

self-conscious emotions / shame / guilt / reappraisal / emotion regulation

Author contributions

Leling Zhu (Formal analysis, Visualization, Writing - original draft), Tingyu Fu (Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology), Xinyu Yan (Writing - review & editing), Jiajin Yuan (Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Project administration, Resources, Supervision, Writing - review & editing), and Jiemin Yang (Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Resources, Supervision, Writing - review & editing)

Conflict of interest

None declared.

Acknowledgement

The author(s) declare that financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This work was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant nos. NSFC31871103, NSFC31971018), and the Sichuan Natural Science Foundation for Outstanding Young Scholar Fund (Grant no. 2023NSFSC1938).

References

[1] Aldao A, Nolen-Hoeksema S, Schweizer S (2010) Emotion-regulation strategies across psychopathology: a meta-analytic review. Clin Psychol Rev 30:217-37. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2009.11.004

[2] Bastian B, Jetten J, Fasoli F (2011) Cleansing the soul by hurting the flesh: the guilt-reducing effect of pain. Psychol Sci 22:334-5. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797610397058

[3] Cândea D-M, Szentagotai-Tătar A (2018) Shame-proneness, guilt-proneness and anxiety symptoms: a meta-analysis. J Anxiety Disord 58:78-106. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2018.07.005

[4] Cândea D-M, Szentágotai-Tătar A (2020) Cognitive reappraisal as an emotion regulation strategy for shame: comparing selfdistancing to changing self-evaluations. J Cogn Ther 13:42-53. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41811-019-00064-4

[5] Chen J, Yuan J, Feng T, et al. (2011) Temporal features of the degree effect in self-relevance: neural correlates. Biol Psychol 87:290-5. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2011.03.012

[6] Delorme A, Makeig S (2004) EEGLAB: an open source toolbox for analysis of single-trial EEG dynamics including independent component analysis. J Neurosci Methods 134:9-21. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jneumeth.2003.10.009

[7] Dempsey H (2017) A comparison of the social-adaptive perspective and functionalist perspective on guilt and shame. Behavioral Sciences 7:83. https://doi.org/10.3390/bs7040083

[8] Gambin M, Sharp C (2018) The relations between empathy, guilt, shame and depression in inpatient adolescents. J Affect Disord 241:381-7. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2018.08.068

[9] Gilead M, Katzir M, Eyal T, et al. (2016) Neural correlates of processing "self-conscious" vs. "basic" emotions. Neuropsychologia 81:207-18. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2015.12.009

[10] Higgs C, Mcintosh T, Connelly S, et al. (2020) Self-focused emotions and ethical decision-making: comparing the effects of regulated and unregulated guilt, shame, and embarrassment. Sci Eng Ethics 26:27-63. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11948-018-00082-z

[11] John OP, Gross JJ (2004) Healthy and unhealthy emotion regulation: personality processes, individual differences, and life span development. J Pers 72:1301-34. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6494.2004.00298.x

[12] Krishnamoorthy G, Davis P, O'donovan A, et al. (2020) Through benevolent eyes: the differential efficacy of perspective taking and cognitive reappraisal on the regulation of shame. J Cogn Ther 14:26388. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41811-020-00085-4

[13] Kross E, Ayduk O, Mischel W (2005) When asking "why" does not hurt. Distinguishing rumination from reflective processing of negative emotions. Psychol Sci 16:709-15. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2005.01600.x

[14] Leach CW (2017) Understanding shame and guilt. In: L. Woodyatt, E. Worthington, M. Wenzel, B. Griffin (eds) Handbook of the Psychology of Self-Forgiveness. Springer, Chamonix. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-60573-9_2

[15] Mcrae K, Ciesielski B, Gross JJ (2012) Unpacking cognitive reappraisal: goals, tactics, and outcomes. Emotion 12:250-5. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0026351

[16] Michl P, Meindl T, Meister F, et al. (2014) Neurobiological underpinnings of shame and guilt: a pilot fMRI study. Soc Cognit Affect Neurosci 9:150-7. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nss114

[17] Na E, Jang K-M, Kim M-S (2019) An event-related potential study of decision-making and feedback utilization in female college students who binge drink. Front Psychol 10:2606. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02606

[18] Orth U, Robins RW, Soto CJ (2010) Tracking the trajectory of shame, guilt, and pride across the life span. J Pers Soc Psychol 99:1061-71. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021342

[19] Qi S, Li Y, Tang X, et al. (2017) The temporal dynamics of detached versus positive reappraisal: an ERP study. Cogn Affect Behav Neurosci 17:516-27. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13415-016-0494-4

[20] Sánchez-García J, Rodríguez GE, Hernández-Gutiérrez D, et al. (2021) Neural dynamics of pride and shame in social context: an approach with event-related brain electrical potentials. Brain Struct Function 226:1855-69. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00429-021-022967

[21] Shiota MN, Levenson RW (2012) Turn down the volume or change the channel? Emotional effects of detached versus positive reappraisal. J Pers Soc Psychol 103:416-29. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0029208

[22] Song J, Wei Y, Ke H (2019) The effect of emotional information from eyes on empathy for pain: a subliminal ERP study. PLoS ONE 14:e0226211. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0226211

[23] Sznycer D (2019) Forms and functions of the self-conscious emotions. Trends Cogn Sci 23:143-57. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2018.11.007

[24] Tacikowski P, Nowicka A (2010) Allocation of attention to self-name and self-face: an ERP study. Biol Psychol 84:318-24. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2010.03.009

[25] Tangney JP, Stuewig J, Mashek DJ (2007) Moral emotions and moral behavior. Annu Rev Psychol 58:345-72. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.56.091103.070145

[26] Troy AS, Shallcross AJ, Mauss IB (2013) A person-by-situation approach to emotion regulation: cognitive reappraisal can either help or hurt, depending on the context. Psychol Sci 24:2505-14. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797613496434

[27] Wagner U, N'diaye K, Ethofer T, et al. (2011) Guilt-specific processing in the prefrontal cortex. Cereb Cortex 21:2461-70. https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhr016

[28] Williamson TJ, Ostroff JS, Haque N, et al. (2020) Dispositional shame and guilt as predictors of depressive symptoms and anxiety among adults with lung cancer: the mediational role of internalized stigma. Stigma Health 5:425-33. https://doi.org/10.1037/sah0000214

[29] Yu C, Zhang Q, Zhang X (2021) The differences in regulatory effect and success degree of negative emotions between detached and positive cognitive reappraisals in juveniles, youths, middle and elderly peoples. J Psych Sci 44:1376-82. http://www.psysci.org/EN/Y2021/V44/I6/1376

[30] Yuan J, Luo Y, Yan JH, et al. (2009) Neural correlates of the females' susceptibility to negative emotions: an insight into genderrelated prevalence of affective disturbances. Hum Brain Mapp 30:3676-86. https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.20796

[31] Zhu R, Feng C, Zhang S, et al. (2019) Differentiating guilt and shame in an interpersonal context with univariate activation and multivariate pattern analyses. Neuroimage 186:476-86. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2018.11.012

[32] Zhu R, Wu H, Xu Z, et al. (2017) Early distinction between shame and guilt processing in an interpersonal context. Social Neurosci 14:5366. https://doi.org/10.1080/17470919.2017.1391119