Subjective emotional arousal: an explorative study on the role of gender, age, intensity, emotion regulation difficulties, depression and anxiety symptoms, and meta-emotion

Abstract

Subjective emotional arousal in typically developing adults was investigated in an explorative study. 177 participants (20–70 years) rated facial expressions and words for self-experienced arousal and perceived intensity, and completed the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation scale and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression scale (HADS-D). Exclusion criteria were psychiatric or neurological diseases, or clinically relevant scores in the HADS-D. Arousal regarding faces and words was significantly predicted by emotional clarity. Separate analyses showed following significant results: arousal regarding faces and arousal regarding words constantly predicted each other; negative faces were predicted by age and intensity; neutral faces by gender and impulse control; positive faces by gender and intensity; negative words by emotional clarity; and neutral words by gender. Males showed higher arousal scores than females regarding neutral faces and neutral words; for the other arousal scores, no explicit group differences were shown. Cluster analysis yielded three distinguished emotional characteristics groups: “emotional difficulties disposition group” (mainly females; highest emotion regulation difficulties, depression and anxiety scores; by trend highest arousal), “low emotional awareness group” (exclusively males; lowest awareness regarding currently experienced emotions; by trend intermediate arousal), and a “low emotional difficulties group” (exclusively females; lowest values throughout). No age effect was shown. Results suggest that arousal elicited by facial expressions and words are specialized parts of a greater emotional processing system and that typically developing adults show some kind of stable, modality-unspecific dispositional baseline of emotional arousal. Emotional awareness and clarity, and impulse control probably are trait aspects of emotion regulation that influence emotional arousal in typically developing adults and can be regarded as aspects of meta-emotion. Different emotional personality styles were shown between as well as within gender groups.

The Acute and Persisting Impact of COVID-19 on Trajectories of Adolescent Depression: Sex Differences and Social Connectedness

“…Although girls appear to be suffering more than boys in response to COVID-19, our results show that boys are also impacted and thus should not be overlooked in prevention and intervention efforts. Prior research suggests boys' delayed response may be related to higher levels of emotional regulation, lower levels of socioemotional awareness and/or societal norms and pressures for males to suppress negative emotions more so than girls (Deckert et al, 2020;Hagler et al, 2016;Pollastri et al, 2018).…”

Emotion processing and regulation in major depressive disorder: A 7T resting‐state fMRI study

“…Casual inferences from effective connectivity findings also indicated that amygdala hyperarousal is neither adequately transmitted to, nor sufficiently inhibited by cognitive control hubs (see (Stuhrmann, Suslow, & Dannlowski, 2011) for attenuated bottom‐up/top‐down amygdala‐prefrontal connections in MDD). In addition, behavioral evidences implied that higher values in stimulus‐specific subjective arousal eventuates to inefficient and costly implementation of cognitive control strategies (Sheppes et al, 2014), specifically in people with greater depression scores (Deckert, Schmoeger, Auff, & Willinger, 2019). Altogether, it seems that overburden of emotional reactivity in amygdala may inversely affect cognitive control processes in prefrontal cortices, which leads to diminished regulatory actions.…”

Emotion processing and regulation in major depressive disorder: A 7T resting-state fMRI study

“…Casual inferences from effective connectivity findings also indicated that amygdala hyperarousal is neither adequately transmitted to, nor sufficiently inhibited by cognitive control hubs (see (Stuhrmann, Suslow, & Dannlowski, 2011) for attenuated bottom-up/top-down amygdala-prefrontal connections in MDD). In addition, behavioral evidences implied that higher values in stimulus-specific subjective arousal eventuates to inefficient and costly implementation of cognitive control strategies (Sheppes et al, 2014), specifically in people with greater depression scores (Deckert, Schmoeger, Auff, & Willinger, 2019). Altogether, it seems that overburden of emotional reactivity in amygdala may inversely affect cognitive control processes in prefrontal cortices, which leads to diminished regulatory actions.…”