Emotion regulation plays a central role in empathy. Only by successfully regulating our own emotions can we reliably use them in order to interpret the content and valence of others’ emotions correctly. In an fMRI-based experiment, we show that regulating one’s emotion via reappraisal modulated biased emotional intensity ratings following an empathy for pain manipulation. Task based analysis revealed increased activity in the right IFG when painful emotions were regulated using reappraisal, whereas empathic feelings that were not regulated resulted in increased activity bilaterally in the precuneus, SMG and MFG, as well as the right parahippocampal gyrus. Functional connectivity analysis indicated that the right IFG plays a role in the regulation of empathy for pain, through its connections with regions in the empathy for pain network. Furthermore, These connections were further modulated as a function of the type of regulation used: In sum, our results suggest that accurate empathic judgment (i.e. empathy that is unbiased) relies on a complex interaction between neural regions involved in emotion regulation and regions associated with empathy for pain. Thus, demonstrating the importance of emotion regulation in the formulation of complex social systems and sheds light on the intricate network implicated in this complex process.

Aging has been associated with a motivational shift to positive over negative information (i.e., positivity effect), which is often explained by a limited future time perspective (FTP) within the framework of socioemotional selectivity theory (SST). However, whether a limited FTP functions similarly in younger and older adults, and whether inter-individual differences in socioemotional functioning are similarly associated with preference for positive information (i.e., positivity) is still not clear. We investigated younger (20–35 years, N = 73) and older (60–75 years, N = 56) adults’ gaze preferences on pairs of happy, angry, sad, and neutral faces using an eye-tracking system. We additionally assessed several parameters potentially underlying inter-individual differences in emotion processing such as FTP, stress, cognitive functioning, social support, emotion regulation, and well-being. While we found no age-related differences in positivity when the entire trial duration was considered, older adults showed longer fixations on the more positive face in later stages of processing (i.e., positivity shifts ). This allocation of resources toward more positive stimuli might serve an emotion regulatory purpose and seems consistent with the SST. However, our findings suggest that age moderates the relationship between FTP and positivity shifts, such that the relationship between FTP and positivity preferences was negative in older, and positive in younger adults, potentially stemming from an age-related differential meaning of the FTP construct across age. Furthermore, our exploratory analyses showed that along with the age and FTP interaction, lower levels of worry also played a significant role in positivity shifts. We conclude that positivity effects cannot be solely explained by aging, or the associated reduced FTP per se , but is rather determined by a complex interplay of psychosocial and emotional features.

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Cardiovascular risk factors (CVRFs) have been linked to depression, but it is still unclear whether this association becomes stronger or weaker from mid- to later life. Thus, our main aim was to investigate the influence of age on the associations between CRVFs and trajectories of depressed mood. Our sample included 6835 individuals (aged 52–89 years) from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing (ELSA), who were free of manifest vascular disease at baseline and had bi-yearly measurements of depressed mood over ten years. A composite score incorporated the presence of five CVRFs: hypertension, diabetes, smoking, obesity, and hypercholesterolemia. We used second-order latent growth models to examine the effect of CVRFs, age, and their interaction on levels and changes in depressed mood over time. Our results revealed that baseline CVRFs were associated with higher levels of depressed mood. This association decreased with age and was stronger in midlife compared to later life. CVRFs were not related to changes in depressed mood, indicating that these differences remained stable over time. These findings suggest that CVRFs in midlife, but less so in older age, predict stable differences in depressed mood. They are consistent with reports on the importance of CVRFs in midlife and may support the idea that prevention of vascular burden in this age period may be critical to maintain mental health.