Emotions on our mind: cognitive appraisal and its contribution to verbal emotion processing and emotion regulation
Final Report Abstract
Emotion and language have long been treated as independent phenomena. Research of the last years has proven otherwise. Emotion and language affect each other. The project improved the understanding of this reciprocal relationship by extending research on emotion word processing to the domains of appraisal theories and emotion regulation. In summary, the project had three major aims: Firstly, determine how emotions are decoded from words and appraised in terms of their relevance for the perceiver. Secondly, determine how processing of emotional words can lead to emotion regulation akin to cognitive forms of emotion regulation. Thirdly, investigate the neurophysiological correlates of these processes under different appraisal conditions ranging from silent reading and implicit appraisal to active emotion regulation. In contrast to previous studies, the emotional meaning of a word could vary in terms of its self-reference (self, e.g., my fear), other (e.g., his fear), no reference (e.g., the fear) or was reversed by negation (e.g., no fear). Moreover, words could be related to the first, second and third person perspective. Thus, in contrast to previous research, the full spectrum of appraisal processes was taken into consideration. The results provide novel insight into emotion and language processing. They show that information about the emotional meaning of a word and its reference (self, other vs. no reference) is first processed separately in the brain and integrated at later processing stages to appraise its personal relevance. Across studies, relevance detection was associated with a processing advantage for self-related emotional words in the EEG. Particularly, modulation of late brain potentials revealed a positivity bias in the processing of self-related positive words in healthy participants (self-positivity bias) and a negativity bias in the processing of self-related negative words (self-negativity bias) with increasing negative mood in the Beck Depression Inventory. The clinical relevance of this finding could be approved in a separate EEG study supporting a self-negativity bias in the processing of selfrelated emotional words as a major symptom of major depressive disorder. Exploratory EEG analysis suggested a ventrally mediated MPFC network to be involved in the implicit appraisal of self-related emotional words. This suggestion could be confirmed in a functional imaging study. As hypothesized from meta-analytic research, activation of a network consisting of the left and right amygdala, the insula and the ventral medial prefrontal cortex was found, supporting a specific role of the ventral medial prefrontal cortex in the processing of self-related emotional words describing the reader’s own emotions. Appraisal of emotional words was not restricted to affective processing but selectively influenced priming of approach and avoidance related behavior indicating that words can be powerful emotion regulators. This was confirmed by a series of further studies that investigated how processing of specific cue words influences emotional face processing and emotion regulation. The results of these studies clearly support the hypothesis that reframing an emotional stimulus verbally induces emotion regulatory effects by altering sensory input and behavioral output to emotional stimuli through reappraisal. Altogether, the results initiated and the paradigms developed are of relevance to a broad research community. Future projects will be aimed at testing the boundary condition of selfand emotion word processing in real life and in various clinical settings.
Publications
- (2010). Self-reference modulates the processing of emotional stimuli in the absence of explicit appraisal instructions. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 6, 653-661
Herbert, C., Pauli, P., & Herbert, B.M.
- (2011) His or mine? The time course of self-other discrimination in emotion processing. Social Neuroscience, 6, 277-288
Herbert, C., Herbert, B.M., Ethofer, T., & Pauli, P.
- (2011). Emotional self-reference: Brain structures involved in the processing of words describing one´s own emotions. Neuropsychologia, 49, 2947-2956
Herbert, C., Herbert, B.M., & Pauli, P.
- (2011). Negation as a means for emotion regulation? Startle reflex modulation during processing of negated emotional words. Cognitive Affective and Behavioral Neuroscience, 11, 199-206
Herbert, C., Deutsch, R., Sütterlin, S., Kübler, A., & Pauli, P.
- (2012). No fear, no panic: Probing negation as a means for emotion regulation. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
Herbert, C., Deutsch, R., Platte, P., & Pauli, P.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nss043) - (2013). Your emotion or mine: Labeling feelings alters emotional face perception- An ERP study on automatic and intentional affect labeling. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 7, 1-14
Herbert, C., Sfärlea, A., & Blumenthal, T.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2013.00378) - (2014). The HisMine-Paradigm: A new paradigm to detect self-awareness. Social Neuroscience, 9, 289-299
Blume, C., & Herbert, C.
(See online at https://doi.org/10.1080/17470919.2014.886616)
