Bottom-up and top-down emotion generation: implications for emotion regulation.

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Affective Science
• Psychology

Background:

• Emotion regulation is vital for well-being, with varying strategy effectiveness.
• Little research has explored how emotion generation mode (bottom-up vs. top-down) influences regulation success.
• Top-down emotions arise from cognitive evaluation, while bottom-up emotions stem from stimulus properties.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the interaction between emotion generation mode and emotion regulation strategy.
• To test the hypothesis that top-down emotions are better regulated by top-down strategies like cognitive reappraisal.

Main Methods:

• Induced bottom-up and top-down emotions in participants.
• Instructed participants to use cognitive reappraisal to reduce negative affect.
• Measured emotional responding via self-report and neural activity (amygdala).

Main Results:

• Cognitive reappraisal was more effective for top-down generated emotions than bottom-up emotions, as indicated by self-reported affect.
• Reappraising bottom-up emotions paradoxically increased amygdala activity, suggesting less effective regulation.
• An interaction was observed between emotion generation mode and regulation success.

Conclusions:

• The mode of emotion generation significantly influences the efficacy of cognitive reappraisal.
• Findings highlight the importance of considering emotion generation pathways when evaluating emotion regulation strategies.
• This interaction is crucial for understanding clinical disorders treated with reappraisal and comparing regulation techniques.