On the malleability of emotional encoding

The encoding of emotional events has sometimes been regarded as automatic, because the processing involved can occur outside awareness. However, this does not mean that emotional encoding cannot be controlled, although it may often be the case that people are unaware of how to do so, or even that such control is possible. Evidence is presented to show that the neural activation associated with fear-related stimuli can be modified by top-down control, and that related instructions can modify emotional vulnerability to stressful events. However, it is further argued that such effortful control is resource limited, and that more robust control might be achieved via repeated practice in accessing positive representations that inhibit competing negative meanings. Studies of attentional and interpretative encoding biases induced by practice show that they have causal effects on emotional vulnerability, by influencing how threatening events are encoded. Experimental investigations are beginning to reveal the critical processes underlying these changes in emotional vulnerability, and it is argued that the same approach is likely to be helpful in addressing questions relevant to therapeutic change.