Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Emory University
Individuals often try to regulate their emotions in order to adaptively behave in society. We investigated the effect of cognitive emotion regulation on emotional arousal and subsequent episodic memory. We hypothesized that cognitive effort to up- or down-regulate negative emotions would result in elevated or lowered physiological arousal, respectively. Because physiological arousal plays a critical role in memory processes, we also hypothesized that elevated or lowered arousal following up- or down-regulation of emotion would be associated with enhanced or reduced episodic memory. To test these hypotheses, eighteen women viewed emotionally negative and neutral pictures while they tried to either enhance or decrease emotional reactions elicited by the pictures, or to naturally view the pictures. Skin conductance responses (SCRs) were measured concurrently. Memory for the pictures was assessed with a free-recall test. Results showed that enhancing negative emotion resulted in greater physiological arousal compared to decreasing negative emotion. Enhancing negative emotions marginally increased memory for the negative pictures compared to decreasing negative emotions. When the effects of increasing or decreasing negative emotion were compared with those of naturally viewing emotion, however, the effects were not statistically significant. These findings provide partial support to the claim that cognitive regulation of emotional states may alter both immediate emotional reactions to emotional events and subsequent memory for these events. (Korean J Str Res 2007;15:1∼8)