Effects of menstrual cycle and neuroticism on females' emotion regulation

• We examined women's efforts and success of using cognitive reappraisal.
• Women's emotion regulation can be affected by the menstrual cycle.
• Women in the menstrual phase expend more effort to regulate their emotions.
• Women in the menstrual phase gain less success at regulating their emotions.
• Neuroticism levels have no impact on women's emotion regulation.

Fifteen highly neurotic women and 21 women who were low in neuroticism participated in this study. The women were surveyed three times over a single menstrual cycle during the mid-late luteal, menstrual, and late follicular phases. Each time, the participants were asked to use reappraisal to regulate their emotions, which were evoked by a sad film clip, and their subjective emotional experiences and physiological responses were recorded. The results showed that neuroticism had no impact on emotion regulation, and the females experienced fluctuations in their emotion regulation success over their menstrual cycle. During the menstrual phase, women reported significantly higher levels of reappraisal, but subjective sadness did not differ throughout the three phases. Additionally, the regulation effects on galvanic skin response (GSR) were smaller during the menstrual phase than in the mid-late luteal phase. These results suggested that women in the menstrual phase expended more effort but gained less success at regulating their emotions.