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. 2023 Oct 28;18(1):nsad057.
doi: 10.1093/scan/nsad057.

Gender differences in cognitive and affective interpersonal emotion regulation in couples: an fNIRS hyperscanning

Wenhai Zhang  1   2 , Lanting Qiu  1 , Fanggui Tang  1 , Hong-Jin Sun  3
Affiliations

Gender differences in cognitive and affective interpersonal emotion regulation in couples: an fNIRS hyperscanning

Wenhai Zhang et al. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. .

Abstract

Emotion regulation is vital in maintaining romantic relationships in couples. Although gender differences exist in cognitive and affective strategies during 'intrapersonal' emotion regulation, it is unclear how gender differences through affective bonds work in 'interpersonal' emotion regulation (IER) in couples. Thirty couple dyads and 30 stranger dyads underwent functional near-infrared spectroscopy hyperscanning recordings when targets complied with their partner's cognitive engagement (CE) and affective engagement (AE) strategies after viewing sad and neutral videos. Behaviorally, for males, CE was less effective than AE in both groups, but little difference occurred for females between AE and CE. For couples, Granger causality analysis showed that male targets had less neural activity than female targets in CH06, CH13 and CH17 during CE. For inflow and outflow activities on CH06 and CH13 (frontopolar cortex), respectively, male targets had less activity in the CE condition than in the AE condition, while for outflow activities on CH 17 (dorsolateral prefrontal cortex), female targets had more activity in the CE condition than in the AE condition. However, these differences were not observed in strangers. These results suggest gender differences in CE but not in AE and dissociable flow patterns in male and female targets in couples during sadness regulation.

Keywords: Granger causality; couples; fNIRS; gender difference; hyperscanning; interpersonal emotion regulation.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declared that they had no conflict of interest with respect to their authorship or the publication of this article.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
The experimental design. (A) The flow of a trial. Each trial began with a fixation of 4 s, and then both the regulator (red) and target (blue) watched a video at the same time. After watching the video, the target needed to evaluate his or her sadness, and sooner, the regulator read the IER sentence. Subsequently, they watched the same video, the target evaluated sadness again, and they had communication for 7 s at the end. (B) The montage provided by NIRx Medical Technologies. Sources are depicted as red dots, detectors as green dots.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
Behavioral results. (A) Descriptive statistical results of the sadness difference score. (B) The interaction effect of REGULATION × GENDER on sadness difference score in couple dyads when the target was male or female. (C) The correlation between sadness difference score and enhancing positive affect (EPA) abilities of participants. AE: affective engagement; CE: cognitive engagement. C–C dyad: couple dyad; S–S dyad: stranger dyad. Error bars indicate standard errors. * P < 0.05 (Bonferroni corrected).
Fig. 3.
Fig. 3.
ANOVA results of directional coupling. (A) The interaction effect of REGULATION × GENDER × GROUP on the GC change in CH06 in the inflow direction in different dyads when the target was male or female. (B) The interaction effect of REGULATION × GENDER × GROUP on GC change in CH13 in the outflow direction in different dyads when the target was male or female. (C) The interaction effect of REGULATION × GENDER × GROUP on GC change in CH17 in the outflow direction in different dyads when the target was male or female. AE: affective engagement; CE: cognitive engagement. Inflow: from regulator to target; outflow: from target to regulator. C–C dyad: couple dyad; S–S dyad: stranger dyad. Error bars indicate standard errors. * P < 0.05 (FDR corrected).
Fig. 4.
Fig. 4.
Correlation results of directional coupling. (A) Direction of Granger causality (GC) values at CH06, CH13 and CH17 in the inflow and outflow directions. (B) The correlation between GC change in AE at CH13 in the outflow direction and managing despondency distress (DES) scores. (C) The correlation between GC change in CE at CH17 in the outflow direction and perceived self-efficacy in managing anger (ANG) scores. AE: affective engagement; CE: cognitive engagement. Inflow: from regulator to target; outflow: from target to regulator. * P < 0.05 (FDR corrected).
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