Generalization of savoring to novel positive stimuli

Savoring is a positive emotion up-regulation technique that can increase electrocortical and self-reported valence and arousal to positive and neutral pictures, with effects persisting to increase response to the same stimuli when encountered later. Outside of the lab, emotion regulation techniques that persist to affect not just encounters with the same stimuli but also encounters with similar, but previously unencountered stimuli should save individuals time and effort. Here, we used event-related potentials and picture ratings to test whether savoring would generalize to similar, but previously unseen positive pictures. To this end, 89 participants (56 female; M age = 18.96 years, SD = 1.87) were asked to savor positive pictures from one category (e.g., happy people) and to view positive pictures from another category (e.g., cute animals), as well as to view neutral pictures (e.g., plants). In a subsequent passive picture viewing task, participants viewed novel pictures from all three categories (i.e., happy people, cute animals, plants). In the first task, savoring was effective for pictures of animals throughout picture presentation, but only for pictures of people during the later part of picture presentation. In the second task, savoring generalized to novel pictures of animals, though this was only evident in the early portion of picture processing (and for self-reported ratings). Therefore, savoring holds promise as a useful technique for increasing positive emotion in everyday life, though more work is needed to understand whether effects may vary depending on different types of picture content.