Down-regulation of love feelings after a romantic break-up: Self-report and electrophysiological data.

Event‐related potential studies of emotional processing have focused on the late positive potential (LPP), a sustained positive deflection in the ERP that is increased for emotionally arousing stimuli. A prominent theory suggests that modulation of the LPP is a response to stimulus significance, defined in terms of the activation of appetitive and aversive motivational systems. The current review incorporates experimental studies showing that manipulations that alter the significance of stimuli alter LPP amplitude. Complementing these within‐person studies, also included is individual differences research on depression wherein the LPP has been used to study reduced neural sensitivity to emotional stimuli. Finally, the current review builds an existing framework that the LPP observed in studies in emotional processing and the P300 observed in classic oddball studies may reflect a common response to stimulus significance. This integrative account has implications for the functional interpretation of these ERPs, their neurobiological mechanisms, and clinical applications.

Romantic breakup distress in university students: A narrative reviewThis narrative review of literature on romantic breakup distress and recovery includes studies on the effects of this distress, risk and protective factors for breakup distress and interventions. The effects include sadness, anger and broken heart syndrome. The risk factors for breakup distress include being the "dumpee" versus the "dumper", internet surveillance of the "dumper", having been in a spiritual relationship, intrusive thoughts, an orientation towards future relationships or a fear of being single, having the relationship as part of your identity or your self-worth and experiencing social constraints like criticism. Protective factors include having been more committed to the relationship and then continuing to experience closeness in that relationship but also having a rebound relationship. Effective interventions include a writing task describing the breakup, online group discussions of the breakup and tryptophan for its serotonin-enhancing properties.Limitations of this literature include lack of generalizability from the mostly female university student samples and potentially biased self-report data.ABSTRACT IJPRR:https://escipub.com/international-journal-of-psychological-research-and-reviews/ 1 Tiffany Field, IJPRR, 2020 3:30 IJPRR:https://escipub.com/international-journal-of-psychological-research-and-reviews/ 2

This study compared negative reappraisal of an ex-partner and positive reappraisal of a situation after a break-up. Negative reappraisal was expected to reduce love, increase unpleasantness, reduce upsetness about the break-up, and reduce motivated attention to the ex-partner as measured by the late positive potential (LPP) compared to positive reappraisal. In this study, twenty-four participants who were upset about a break-up viewed pictures of their ex-partner in two reappraisal conditions and a no reappraisal condition. In the negative reappraisal condition, participants thought about negative aspects of their ex-partner. In the positive reappraisal condition, participants thought about positive aspects of the situation. Subsequently, participants viewed ex-partner pictures and the LPP was measured. Participants rated infatuation, attachment, valence, and upsetness about the break-up. Even though numerical differences were in line with our hypotheses, we found no evidence of significant differences between conditions for infatuation, attachment, valence, upsetness, or LPP amplitude in the preregistered analyses.