Spontaneous emotion regulation: Differential effects on evoked brain potentials and facial muscle activity

• We examined free choice emotion regulation with psychophysiological measures.
• Facial expressions and ratings show that successful emotion regulation is possible even without specific strategy training.
• Regulation effects on late positive potentials probably indicate changes in mental effort.

Late positive potentials (LPPs) were found to be decreased during down-regulation and increased during up-regulation of positive and negative emotions. However, previous studies lack ecological validity, since they explicitly instructed their participants to use certain regulation strategies. The goal of our study was to test an ecologically more valid paradigm of emotion regulation. We therefore investigated the effects of freely chosen emotion regulation strategies on LPPs and additionally assessed facial EMG responses and valence and arousal ratings as control variables. Responses to positive IAPS pictures were marked by pleasant valence ratings and high activations of M. zygomaticus major, negative pictures elicited unpleasant valence ratings and high activations of M. corrugator supercilii, and both, positive and negative pictures, went along with increased arousal ratings and LPPs. Importantly, ratings and EMG activity were intensified through up-regulation and attenuated through down-regulation of emotions, while LPPs were increased through both up-and down-regulation. We conclude that LPPs in paradigms with free choice of emotion regulation strategies might be a marker of attentional resources required for the selection of adequate emotion up- and down-regulation strategies, while LPP effects following emotion regulation with specific, instructed strategies reflect modulated arousal processes.