Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2024 May 15:18:1387634.
doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2024.1387634. eCollection 2024.

Temporal dynamics of positive emotion regulation: insights from facial electromyography

Sylvia D Kreibig  1 , James J Gross  1
Affiliations

Temporal dynamics of positive emotion regulation: insights from facial electromyography

Sylvia D Kreibig et al. Front Hum Neurosci. .

Abstract

Introduction: Emotion regulation (ER) is a complex process that manifests gradually over time. This study investigated the temporal dynamics of ER in modifying positive emotions in terms of both negative affect (NA) and positive affect (PA) dimensions.

Methods: After participants had been exposed to pleasant pictures for 8,000 ms, they received instructions to either continue viewing the picture (no regulation) or reappraise it with a neutral meaning (neutralize goal) or negative meaning (transform goal) for another 8,000 ms. We obtained corrugator supercilii and zygomaticus major electromyography (EMG) as objective measures of NA and PA.

Results: For the no-regulation condition, upon instruction onset, we observed maintained low levels of corrugator and high levels of zygomaticus EMG reactivity, indicating sustained PA activation. Compared to the no-regulation condition, for the neutralize goal, we observed no change in corrugator reactivity, which remained at a low level, while zygomaticus reduction started at 1,000 ms after instruction onset, indicating decreased PA and generation of a neutral emotional state. For the transform goal, we observed corrugator increase and zygomaticus decrease both starting at 1,500 ms after instruction onset and co-existing throughout the regulation period. These results indicate increased NA and decreased PA, relating to generation of a negative emotional state. The transform goal differed from the neutralize goal in terms of corrugator increase starting at 2,500 ms after instruction onset. Albeit simultaneous onset of changes on corrugator and zygomaticus reactivity under the transform goal, model-fitting analyses indicated that the best-fitting trajectory was one that first emphasized PA reduction until, at 3,000 ms, it turned into primary NA increase.

Discussion: These distinct temporal patterns highlight the possibility of effecting one-dimensional PA change with the neutralize goal and sequential two-dimensional change (first decreasing PA, then increasing NA) with the transform goal. This research sheds light on the time course of emotional change brought about by different regulatory goals.

Keywords: corrugator supercilii (CS); electromyography (EMG); emotion regulation (reappraisal); negative affect (NA); positive affect (PA); temporal dynamics analysis; time course analysis; zygomaticus major (ZM).

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Emotion regulation process components within two-dimensional space of negative and positive affect. The figure illustrates regulation of a highly positive initial emotion (like joy or desire, teal circle) through reappraisal as the ER strategy implemented as reframing as the ER tactic. There may be two different ER outcomes: a less positive and more neutral ER outcome (e.g., neutral emotion, gray circle) may be achieved by pursuing a neutralize goal (G1; open gray circle); a less positive and more negative ER outcome (like fear or disgust, yellow circle) may be achieved by pursuing a transform goal (G2; open yellow circle). See sections 1 Introduction and 1.1 Emotion regulation for a detailed explanation of this figure. ER, emotion regulation; G1, ER goal 1; G2, ER goal 2.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Illustration of Hypotheses 3a, 3b, and 3c for the temporal change trajectory of the transform goal through two-dimensional affective space. Light yellow circles visualize the hypothesized trajectory converting the initial emotion (teal circle) into the ER outcome (yellow circle). (A) Illustration of H3a, the neutral trajectory, i.e., sequential change in form of, first, PA reduction and, second, NA increase over time, describing an L-shape trajectory of passing through a neutral emotional state. (B) Illustration of H3b, the mixed-emotions trajectory, i.e., sequential change in form of, first, NA increase and, second, PA reduction over time, describing a trajectory of an inverse-step function, passing through a mixed-emotional state. (C) Illustration of H3c, the valence trajectory, i.e., concurrent change on NA and PA over time, describing a diagonal change trajectory that corresponds to the valence dimension in affective space, i.e., a 45°-rotation of NA and PA axes. ER, emotion regulation; H3a, Hypothesis 3a; H3b, Hypothesis 3b; H3c, Hypothesis 3c.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Illustration of the time courses of emotional responses to pleasant stimuli under the no-regulation condition and under cognitive reappraisal with neutralize or transform emotion regulation (ER) goals on corrugator supercilii and zygomaticus major electromyography (EMG) reactivity. (A) displays responses within two-dimensional space, constructed with corrugator and zygomaticus as independent dimensions. (B, C) display responses within one-dimensional space as plots over time of corrugator and zygomaticus reactivity, respectively. Reactivity was quantified as percent change from each trial's preceding rest baseline. Error bars indicate 95% Cousineau-Morey within-subject confidence intervals (Baguley, 2012). (A) Intersections of 95% confidence intervals reflect condition means averaged over time, as originally reported in Kreibig et al. (2023). (B, C) The presence of a solid bar above the x-axis indicates periods of time in which the ER goal conditions differed. A gray bar reflects differences between neutralize and no-regulation conditions; a yellow bar reflects differences between transform and no-regulation conditions; and a red bar reflects differences between transform and neutralize conditions.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Best-fitting model of temporal trajectory of change brought about by cognitive reappraisal of pleasant stimuli under transform goal condition (i.e., reinterpreting pleasant stimuli with a negative meaning) through two-dimensional affective space spanned by corrugator supercilii and zygomaticus major electromyography reactivity. The best-fitting prediction followed a neutral trajectory as proposed under Hypothesis 3a, describing an L-shape function through affective space. The transition from primarily zygomaticus decrease to corrugator increase occurred at 3,000 ms. EMG, electromyography.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Illustration of onset and duration of effects of down-regulating emotional responses to pleasant stimuli through cognitive reappraisal (CR) as indexed by potential increase of corrugator supercilii and reduction of zygomaticus major. Top of figure shows effects as observed in prior studies of pre-stimulus delivery of CR instructions. Bottom of figure shows effects as observed in prior studies of post-stimulus delivery of CR instructions. Results illustrated in black and white come from time course studies (black: indication of duration of regulation period; white: indication of effect duration). Results illustrated in dark and light gray come from time average studies (dark gray, indication of duration of regulation period; light gray: indication of significant effect). Yellow highlight marks effects as observed in the present study under neutralize and transform emotion regulation goals. Effects are quantified in comparison to the study's no-regulation condition. †Electromyography (EMG) for quantification of muscle activity. ‡Facial Action Coding System (FACS; Ekman and Friesen, 1978) for quantification of muscle activity; Gruber et al. (2014) coded AU12 + AU6 (lip corner puller + cheek raiser); Lalot et al. (2014) coded AU12 (lip corner puller). CS, corrugator supercilii; n.s., non-significant; ZM, zygomaticus major.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

References

    1. Adler J. M., Hershfield H. E. (2012). Mixed emotional experience is associated with and precedes improvements in psychological well-being. PLoS ONE 7:e35633. 10.1371/journal.pone.0035633 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Augustine A. D., Hemenover S. H. (2009). On the relative effectiveness of affect regulation strategies: a meta-analysis. Cogn. Emot. 23, 1181–1220. 10.1080/02699930802396556 - DOI
    1. Baguley T. (2012). Calculating and graphing within-subject confidence intervals for ANOVA. Behav. Res. Methods 44, 158–175. 10.3758/s13428-011-0123-7 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Baur R., Conzelmann A., Wieser M. J., Pauli P. (2015). Spontaneous emotion regulation: differential effects on evoked brain potentials and facial muscle activity. Int. J. Psychophysiol. 96, 38–48. 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2015.02.022 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Bernat E. M., Cadwallader M., Seo D., Vizueta N., Patrick C. (2011). Effects of instructed emotion regulation on valence, arousal, and attentional measures of affective processing. Dev. Neuropsychol. 36, 493–518. 10.1080/87565641.2010.549881 - DOI - PubMed

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare that financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. This research was supported by Swiss National Science Foundation Fellowship PA00P1-139593 awarded to SK.

LinkOut - more resources