Sex Differences and Emotion Regulation: An Event-Related Potential Study

Abstract

Difficulties in emotion regulation have been implicated as a potential mechanism underlying anxiety and mood disorders. It is possible that sex differences in emotion regulation may contribute towards the heightened female prevalence for these disorders. Previous fMRI studies of sex differences in emotion regulation have shown mixed results, possibly due to difficulties in discriminating the component processes of early emotional reactivity and emotion regulation. The present study used event-related potentials (ERPs) to examine sex differences in N1 and N2 components (reflecting early emotional reactivity) and P3 and LPP components (reflecting emotion regulation). N1, N2, P3, and LPP were recorded from 20 men and 23 women who were instructed to “increase,” “decrease,” and “maintain” their emotional response during passive viewing of negative images. Results indicated that women had significantly greater N1 and N2 amplitudes (reflecting early emotional reactivity) to negative stimuli than men, supporting a female negativity bias. LPP amplitudes increased to the “increase” instruction, and women displayed greater LPP amplitudes than men to the “increase” instruction. There were no differences to the “decrease” instruction in women or men. These findings confirm predictions of the female negativity bias hypothesis and suggest that women have greater up-regulation of emotional responses to negative stimuli. This finding is highly significant in light of the female vulnerability for developing anxiety disorders.

Sex differences in effective fronto-limbic connectivity during negative emotion processing

“…At the behavioral level, subjective ratings of negative emotional images were higher in women than men, a result consistent with some studies on emotion (Gardener et al, 2013;Kong et al, 2014), though it should be noted that despite the fact that women's greater 'emotionality' represents a commonsex stereotype, the empirical evidence to support this clam is equivocal (Whittle et al, 2011)]. Consistently, testosterone levels were negatively correlated with subjective ratings of high negative images, while a positive correlation was observed in the case of progesterone.…”

Gender and Racial Differences in Emotional Eating, Food Addiction Symptoms, and Body Weight Satisfaction among Undergraduates

“…Anxiety was more likely to influence the decision to overeat among females than males. Women have also been found to be more sensitive to emotional stimuli and it is speculated that this may have biological basis based on evolutionary pressures [28] . Gardener and colleagues provided innovative research using Neuro scan Stim software with electrodes to determine gender differences in emotional reactions after viewing negative images.…”

“…Gardener and colleagues provided innovative research using Neuro scan Stim software with electrodes to determine gender differences in emotional reactions after viewing negative images. They reported that women show greater early emotional reactivity than men and this could predispose them to greater anxiety [28] . Research studies such as these are important to better understand why females are more vulnerable to anxiety disorders than males.…”

Sexual Dimorphism in the Human Olfactory Bulb: Females Have More Neurons and Glial Cells than Males

“…For many of them, biological correlates have been reported, such as anatomical characteristics of brain areas related to language [3], electrophysiological surrogates of emotion [4], hormonal influences on behavior [5], and functional neuroimaging activation after cognitive tasks such as attention and memory [6].…”