Investigating the Neural Systems That Support the Beneficial Effects of Positive Emotion on Stress Regulation

For this study, community participants visited the PI's psychophysiology lab for a single experimental session. In this study, participants completed a brief mood measure, followed by a task training in which a research assistant described and gave examples of cognitive reappraisal in response to negative images. Participants were then randomly assigned to positive or neutral emotion induction conditions, delivered by virtual reality. Then, participants completed an event-related, picture-based cognitive reappraisal task for 23 minutes. Following the task, participants once again responded to a mood measure, completed post-task questionnaires (individual difference measures) and answered a series of questions regarding the task they completed, including difficulty of regulation, or any images that were personally relevant. The investigators predicted that the positive emotion induction would result in powerful effects on self-reported emotion, which may or may not interact with the cognitive reappraisal condition.