Ratings and eye movements of emotion regulation

Abstract

People  have  different  strategies  to  regulate  and  control  their  own emotions.  For  short-term  emotion  regulation  of  visual  stimuli, cognitive reappraisal and attentional deployment are of relevance. The present  study  used  self-ratings  and  eye-tracking  data  to  replicate previous  findings  that  eye  movements  are  effective  in  emotion regulation.  25  participants  (6  males)  watched  positive  and  negative pictures in an attend condition and a decrease emotion condition. They rated  their  emotional  experience  and  their  eye  movements  were followed  with  an  eye-tracker.  Ratings  showed  that  they  perceived pictures as less emotional in the decrease condition as compared to the attend condition both for positive and negative pictures. This decrease in  ratings  of  emotional  response  was  larger  for  positive  than  for negative  pictures.  Eye-tracking  data  showed  no  significant  effect  of emotion  regulation condition. Further  research  is proposed  to  include self-ratings  in  studies  of  physiological  changes  due  to  emotion regulation,  to  differentiate  between  strategies  of  emotion  regulation potentially used by participants