[Alleviation of sadness by pleasant imagery: analyses of subjective and physiological responses]

This study examined whether elicitation of joy or relaxation would reduce intensity of formerly induced sadness by using imagery tasks. Participants (N = 10) imaged a series of four sad scenes successively in the preliminary experiment. Dependent variables were subjective emotional ratings, heart rate, and facial electromyography of the corrugator and the zygomatic muscles. The result indicated that the sadness-imageries increased heart rate, corrugator activity, and zygomatic activity, as well as sad feeling. The procedure of the main experiment (N = 19) was almost the same as that of the preliminary experiment except that the sadness-imageries were followed by one of the 3 emotional imageries, that is, relaxation, neutrality, and joy. The result indicated that the relaxation-imagery marginally significantly decreased the heart rate that had been increased by the sadness-imageries. The joy-imagery reduced sad feeling but increased the zygomatic activity more than the relaxation-imagery. No effect was found on the heart rate. These results suggested that positive emotions alleviate sadness, and that joy and relaxation alleviate different aspects of sadness.