The impact of self-distancing on emotion explosiveness and accumulation: An fMRI study

Maxime Résibois*, Jean-Yves Rotgé, Pauline Delaveau, Peter Kuppens, Iven Van Mechelen, Philippe Fossati, Philippe Verduyn

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleAcademicpeer-review

Abstract

Emotions unfold over time with episodes differing in explosiveness (i.e., profiles having a steep vs. a gentle start) and accumulation (i.e., profiles increasing over time vs. going back to baseline). In the present fMRI study, we wanted to replicate and extend previous findings on the psychological and neural mechanisms underlying emotion explosiveness and accumulation. Specifically, we aimed to: (a) replicate the finding that different neural mechanisms are associated with emotion explosiveness and accumulation, (b) replicate the finding that adopting a self-distanced (vs. self-immersed) perspective decreases emotion explosiveness and accumulation at the level of self-report, and (c) examine whether adopting a self-distanced (vs. self-immersed) perspective similarly modulates activity in the brain regions associated with emotion explosiveness and accumulation. Participants in an fMRI scanner were asked to adopt a self-immersed or self-distanced perspective while reading and thinking about negative social feedback, and to report on felt changes in negative affect during that period using an emotion intensity profile tracking approach. We replicated previous findings showing that emotion explosiveness and accumulation were related to activity in regions involved in self-referential processing (such as the medial prefrontal cortex) and sustained visceral arousal (such as the posterior insula), respectively. The finding that adopting a self-distanced (vs. self-immersed) perspective lowers emotion explosiveness and accumulation was also replicated at a self-report level. However, perspective taking did not impact activity in the neural correlates of emotion explosiveness and accumulation.

Original languageEnglish
Article numbere0206889
Number of pages19
JournalPLOS ONE
Volume13
Issue number11
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 6 Nov 2018

Keywords

  • INTENSITY PROFILES
  • NEURAL BASES
  • BRAIN
  • METAANALYSIS
  • EXPERIENCES
  • RUMINATION
  • TALAIRACH
  • ANGER
  • MNI
  • DETERMINANTS

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