ELECTROPHYSIOLOGICAL CORRELATES OF EMOTION
REGULATION IN ANXIETY: AN EVENT-RELATED
POTENTIAL STUDY
Robert F. Simons
and Jenna Dietz
Department of
Psychology, University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA
Emotion regulation has been a major focus of current research within the field of psychology due to its importance for psychological well being and implications that emotion dysregulation may be at the heart of many clinical disorders. Recent evidence has pointed towards an emotion dysregulation model of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD). This study sought to examine how groups high and low in trait anxiety perform on an emotion regulation task. Event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while subjects used cognitive reappraisal strategies to modulate their responses to unpleasant stimuli. It was found that the late-positive potential (LPP) was significantly reduced during both down and up-regulation in the low anxious group, whereas the LPP was significantly enhanced during both down and up-regulation in the high anxious group. Results indicate that the pathology of GAD is perhaps caused and likely maintained by a tendency to over-engage unpleasant stimuli and an inability to appropriately employ reappraisal strategies in order to down-regulate negative emotion. Implications for an emotion-regulation based therapy for GAD are discussed.
