Deployment dynamics of hypnotic anger modulation

To understand the role that attention plays in the deployment timeline of hypnotic anger modulation, we composed an Attentional Blink paradigm where the first and second targets were faces, expressing neutral or angry emotions. We then suppressed the salience of angry faces through a “hypnotic numbing” suggestion. We found that hypnotic suggestion only attenuated the emotional salience of the second target (T2). By implementing drift-diffusion decision modelling, we also found that hypnotic suggestion mainly affected decision thresholds. These findings suggest that hypnotic numbing resulted from belated changes in response strategy. Interestingly, a contrast against non-hypnotized participants revealed that the numbing suggestion had the instruction-like feature of incorporating emotional valence into the attentional task-set. Together, our results portray hypnotic anger modulation as a two-tiered process: first, hypnotic suggestion alters the attentional task-set; second, provided processing and response preparation are not interrupted, a hypnotizability-dependent response based on said altered task-set is produced through late cognitive control strategies.     

Hypnotic blindness and the relevance of cognitive style

Real, hypnotized and simulating, unhypnotized subjects were instructed to use either a constructive or a concentrative cognitive style when attempting to respond to a suggestion for hypnotic blindness; also, some subjects were administered the suggestion without any instructions about cognitive style. More reals who received the constructive rather than the concentrative instructions reported complete blindness; a similar number of simulators who received the different instructions reported complete blindness. Moreover, reals who received the constructive instruction reported a more rapidly developed belief in their blindness. The findings are discussed in terms of the relevance of cognitive style to subjects' reports of hypnotic blindness, and the possibility is considered that both reports of and belief in hypnotic blindness are determined in part by cognitive style.     

Depersonalization: a selective impairment of self-awareness

Depersonalization is characterised by a profound disruption of self-awareness mainly characterised by feelings of disembodiment and subjective emotional numbing. It has been proposed that depersonalization is caused by a fronto-limbic (particularly anterior insula) suppressive mechanism--presumably mediated via attention--which manifests subjectively as emotional numbing, and disables the process by which perception and cognition normally become emotionally coloured, giving rise to a subjective feeling of 'unreality'. Our functional neuroimaging and psychophysiological studies support the above model and indicate that, compared with normal and clinical controls, DPD patients show increased prefrontal activation as well as reduced activation in insula/limbic-related areas to aversive, arousing emotional stimuli. Although a putative inhibitory mechanism on emotional processing might account for the emotional numbing and characteristic perceptual detachment, it is likely, as suggested by some studies, that parietal mechanisms underpin feelings of disembodiment and lack of agency feelings.     

Skin conductance response in Swedish United Nations soldiers exposed to fear-relevant stimuli

The aim of this study was to investigate whether there was a difference in skin conductance response between 2 groups of military personnel when exposed to emotionally neutral and charged stimuli. The 2 groups were a combat experience group (n = 10) with prior experience of emotionally charged war situations and a comparison group (n = 10) with no such experience. Results showed that the comparison group reacted more strongly to exposure to both charged and neutral pictures than did the combat experience group, regardless of exposure time. The results are discussed in terms of emotional numbing and differences in anxiety state between the 2 groups.     

Detection of simulated hypnotic amnesia

Highly hypnotizable nonsimulators and high- and low-hypnotizable simulators of hypnosis were administered a hypnotic amnesia suggestion and tested for recall and recognition of a previously learned word list. Simulators exhibited higher levels of recall and recognition amnesia than nonsimulators. Most important, simulators recognized "forgotten" words at lower levels than expected by chance significantly more often than did nonsimulators. Implications for the detection of simulated amnesia in clinical samples are discussed.     

Experiences of Patients in Cognitive Behavioural Group Therapy: A Qualitative Study of Eating Disorders

The aim of this study was to investigate whether there was a difference in skin conductance response between 2 groups of military personnel when exposed to emotionally neutral and charged stimuli. The 2 groups were a combat experience group (n?=?10) with prior experience of emotionally charged war situations and a comparison group (n?=?10) with no such experience. Results showed that the comparison group reacted more strongly to exposure to both charged and neutral pictures than did the combat experience group, regardless of exposure time. The results are discussed in terms of emotional numbing and differences in anxiety state between the 2 groups.     

Posthypnotic suggestions and behavior change: Highly hypnotizables compared with simulators

The authenticity of a posthypnotically released emotion was examined to see whether this emotion also could modify the reaction times (RTs) of subjects. The simulant design proposed by Orne (1979) was utilized, with 10 highly hypnotizable subjects and 10 non-hypnotizable simulators participating in the experiment. The subjects received a post-hypnotic suggestion to the effect that every presentation of a light stimulus would release a feeling of discomfort and that a second light stimulus would be neutral. They were informed that they could terminate the stimulation by pressing a RT switch and received a suggestion of amnesia for the posthypnotic suggestion. The simulators skilfully imitated the objective behavior of the hypnotic subjects; their physiological reactions increased and their RTs were shorter when exposed to the aversive stimulation. The main differences occurred in the subjective reports. The hypnotic subjects reported that the emotion was released involuntarily and found relief in escaping from it, while the simulators reported no corresponding experiences, saying that they had deliberately manipulated the objective behavior.     

Age-Invariance in the Asymmetry of Stimulus-Evoked Emotional Facial Muscle Activity

This study examined possible effects of aging on the lateralization of stimulus-evoked emotional facial muscle activity. Older participants (mean age 68.4 years) and younger participants (mean age 26.4 years) viewed slides of positive, neutral, or negative emotional content. While participants viewed the slides, bilateral electromyographic (EMG) recordings were obtained from the skin surface over zygomatic and corrugator facial muscles. The participants also made ratings of experienced emotional valence and arousal. Expected patterns of subjective experience and asymmetrical EMG activity were found in response to target stimuli. Greater corrugator muscle activity occurred during presentation of negative stimuli, whereas greater zygomatic muscle activity occurred during presentation of positive stimuli. Consistent with right-hemisphere specialization theories of emotion, left-sided facial EMG activity was consistently greater than that of the right side during presentation of emotional stimuli. However, neither subjective ratings nor EMG patterns showed a significant effect of age group. Such similar patterns of emotional response for the two groups suggest, that the aging process does not produce marked changes in stimulus-evoked emotional experience or in the pattern, magnitude, or lateralization of facial muscle activity associated with emotional states.     

Fear of snakes and facial reactions: A case of rapid emotional responding

The aim of the present study was to explore how rapid emotional responses are manifested as facial electromyographic (EMG) reactions when people with explicit fear of snakes are exposed to their fear relevant stimuli. Fifty-six subjects, high or low in fear of snakes, were exposed to pictures of snakes and flowers while facial EMG activity from the corrugator supercilii and the zygomatic major muscle regions was recorded. Measures of autonomic activity and ratings of the stimuli were also collected. Pictures of snakes evoked a rapid corrugator supercilii muscle reaction which was larger in the High fear group as early as 500ms after stimulus onset. The High fear group also rated snakes as more unpleasant and displayed larger skin conductance responses (SCRs) and increased heart rate (HR) when exposed to snakes. Pictures of flowers tended to evoke increased zygomatic major muscle activity which did not differ among the groups. The present results demonstrate that the facial EMG technique is sensitive enough to detect rapidly evoked negative emotional reactions. The results support the hypothesis that people high in fear of snakes are disposed to react very rapidly with a negative emotional response to their fear relevant stimuli.     

Specifying emotional information: Regulation of emotional intensity via executive processes

The degree of specificity at which emotional information is activated might determine evoked emotional intensity. However, the nature of this effect remains unclear. Four studies tested (a) whether people hold the na?ve theory that activating specific details of emotional information arouses acute feelings; (b) whether an emotionally distressed population (social phobics) also holds that theory; and (c) whether voluntarily focusing on specific aspects of a distressing situation reduces its emotional impact. Results indicate that control as well as emotionally distressed people hold a na?ve theory that specifying emotion increases its intensity. However, Studies 3 and 4 showed that voluntarily elaborating specific aspects of a distressing situation reduces distress. Results are discussed in terms of voluntary versus automatic processing of emotional information.     

Exploring emotional and cognitive conflict using speeded voluntary facial expressions

Affective conflict and control may have important parallels to cognitive conflict and control, but these processes have been difficult to quantitatively study with emotionally naturalistic laboratory paradigms. The current study examines a modification of the AX-Continuous Performance Task (AX-CPT), a well-validated probe of cognitive conflict and control, for the study of emotional conflict. In the Emotional AX-CPT, speeded emotional facial expressions measured with electromyography (EMG) were used as the primary response modality, and index of emotional conflict. Bottom-up emotional conflict occurred on trials in which precued facial expressions were incongruent with the valence of an emotionally evocative picture probe (e.g., smiling to a negative picture). A second form of top-down conflict occurred in which the facial expression and picture probe were congruent, but the opposite expression was expected based on the precue. A matched version of the task was also performed (in a separate group of participants) with affectively neutral probe stimuli. Behavioral interference was observed, in terms of response latencies and errors, on all conflict trials. However, bottom-up conflict was stronger in the emotional version of the task compared to the neutral version; top-down conflict was similar across the two versions. The results suggest that voluntary facial expressions may be more sensitive to indexing emotional than nonemotional conflict, and importantly, may provide an ecologically valid method of examining how emotional conflict may manifest in behavior and brain activity.     

Liberating Behavior from Time-Bound Control: Expanding the Present Through Hypnosis1

Temporal perspective was experimentally manipulated by verbal instructions to expand the present while minimizing the significance of past and future. The reactions of trained hypnotic subjects to this induction were compared with hynotic simulators and nonsimulating controls. In a fourth group, time sense was made salient but no suggestion given to alter it. Across a variety of tasks, self-report measures, and behavioral observations, this modification of the boundaries between past, present, and future resulted in profound consequences among the hypnotic subjects. Changes in affect, language, thought processes, sensory awareness, and susceptibility to social-emotional contagion, accompanied an expanded present orientation. Nonreactive measures distinguished simulators from hypnotic subjects who apparently were better able than control subjects to incorporate the induced time distortion and perceive it as a viable alternative to their traditional time perspective. Some implications of time as a pervasive, non-obvious, independent variable in the social control of cognition and behavior are outlined.     

Context effects on emotional and aesthetic evaluations of artworks and IAPS pictures

In the arts emotionally negative objects sometimes can be positively judged. Defining an object as art possibly yields specific changes in how perceivers emotionally experience and aesthetically judge a stimulus. To study how emotional experiences (joy, anger, disgust, fear, sadness, and shame ratings, plus facial EMG) and aesthetic judgements (liking ratings) are modulated by an art context (“This is an artwork”) as compared to non-art reality context (“This is a press photograph”) participants evaluated IAPS pictures and veridical artworks depicting emotionally positive and negative content. In line with the assumption that emotional distancing is an essential feature of the art experience we found that positive emotional reactions were attenuated (joy, M. zygomaticus activation) in an art compared to non-art context. However, context had little influence on negative emotional reactions (anger, disgust, fear, sadness, shame, and M. corrugator activation) suggesting that these are similar in art and non-art. Importantly, only artworks of emotionally negative content were judged more positively in an art context — thus liked more. This study, in accordance with the assumption of a distanced aesthetic mode, shows that an art context fosters appraisal processes that influence emotional experiences, allowing to judge negative stimuli aesthetically more positively — thus suppressing the immediacy of emotional stimulus content.     

Habitual emotion regulation and the facial grimace

Summary.-Images of pleasant scenes usually produce increased activity over the zygomaticus major muscie, as measured by electromyography (EMG), while less activity is elicited by unpleasant images. However, increases in zygomaticus major EMG activity while viewing unpleasant images have occasionally been reported in the literature on affective facial expression (i.e., "grimacing"). To examine the possibility that individual differences in emotion regulation might be responsible for this inconsistently observed phenomenon, the habitual emotion regulation tendencies of 63 participants (32 women) were assessed and categorized according to their regulatory tendencies. Participants viewed emotionally salient images while zygomaticus major EMG activity was recorded. Participants also provided self-report ratings of their experienced emotional valence and arousal while viewing the pictures. Despite demonstrating intact affective ratings, the "grimacing" pattern of zygomaticus major activity was observed in those who were less likely to use the cognitive reappraisal strategy to regulate their emotions.     

Emotional Conception: How Embodied Emotion Concepts Guide Perception and Facial Action

ABSTRACT— This study assessed embodied simulation via electromyography (EMG) as participants first encoded emotionally ambiguous faces with emotion concepts (i.e., "angry,""happy") and later passively viewed the faces without the concepts. Memory for the faces was also measured. At initial encoding, participants displayed more smiling-related EMG activity in response to faces paired with "happy" than in response to faces paired with "angry." Later, in the absence of concepts, participants remembered happiness-encoded faces as happier than anger-encoded faces. Further, during passive reexposure to the ambiguous faces, participants' EMG indicated spontaneous emotion-specific mimicry, which in turn predicted memory bias. No specific EMG activity was observed when participants encoded or viewed faces with non-emotion-related valenced concepts, or when participants encoded or viewed Chinese ideographs. From an embodiment perspective, emotion simulation is a measure of what is currently perceived. Thus, these findings provide evidence of genuine concept-driven changes in emotion perception. More generally, the findings highlight embodiment's role in the representation and processing of emotional information.     

Interference produced by emotional conflict associated with anterior cingulate activation

The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is involved in cognition and emotion. In the classic Stroop task, presentation of stimuli that are in response conflict with one another produces activation in the caudal ACC. In the emotional Stroop task, presentation of emotionally salient stimuli produces activation in the rostral ACC. Presentation of stimuli that are emotionally conflicting should activate the caudal ACC; stimuli that are emotionally salient should activate the rostral ACC. We tested this prediction using functional magnetic resonance imaging while subjects made emotional valence judgments of words overlaid on emotional faces (word-face Stroop task). Emotionally incongruent pairs were responded to more slowly than emotionally congruent pairs. Emotionally incongruent trials were associated with increased activation within the caudal ACC, whereas no ACC activation was found in response to emotional saliency. These results support the conflict-monitoring model of caudal ACC and extend this function to conflict within the domain of emotional stimuli.     

Social fear and expressive reactions to social stimuli

This study explored whether subjects high as compared to low in social fear react with a more negative emotional response, measured as facial electromyographic (EMG) activity, when exposed to social stimuli (pictures of angry and happy facial expressions). It was found that subjects who rated themselves as relatively high in public speaking fear gave larger negative facial EMG responses (Corrugator supercilii muscle activity) to angry faces than did the low fear subjects. Low fear subjects, on the other hand, gave larger positive facial EMG responses (Zygomatic major muscle activity) to happy faces than did the high fear subjects. It was further found that happy stimuli were rated as more hostile and less friendly and happy by the high fear group. Consistent with earlier findings, it was concluded that the facial EMG technique is sensitive to detecting different reactions among subjects relatively high and low in social fear.     

Facial reactions to facial expressions in subjects high and low in public speaking fear

This study investigated whether subjects high and low in public speaking fear react with different facial electromyographic (EMG) activities when exposed to negative and positive social stimuli. A High-fear and Low-fear group were selected by help of a questionnaire and were exposed to slides of angry and happy faces while facial-EMG from the corrugator and zygomatic muscle regions were measured. The subjects also rated the stimuli on different emotional dimensions. Consistent with earlier research it was found that Low fear subjects reacted with increased corrugator activity to angry faces and increased zygomatic activity to happy faces. The High fear group, on the other hand, did not distinguish between angry and happy faces. Rating data indicated that the High fear group perceived angry faces as being emotionally more negative. The present results are consistent with earlier studies, indicating that the facial-EMG technique is sensitive to detect differential responding among clinical interesting groups, such as people suffering from social fears.     

Napping promotes inter-session habituation to emotional stimuli

The effects of a daytime nap on inter-session habituation to aversive visual stimuli were investigated. Healthy young adult volunteers viewed repeated presentations of highly negative and emotionally neutral (but equally arousing) International Affective Picture System (IAPS) photographs during two afternoon sessions separated by 2.5h. Half of the photographs were shown at both sessions (Repeated Sets) and half differed between sessions (Novel Sets). For each stimulus presentation, evoked skin conductance response (SCR), heart-rate deceleration (HRD) and corrugator supercilii EMG response (EMG), were computed and range corrected using respective maximum session-1 responses. Following each presentation, subjects rated each photograph on dimensions of pleasantness and arousability. During the inter-session interval, Nap subjects had a 120-min polysomnographically monitored sleep opportunity, whereas Wake subjects watched a non-stimulating video. Nap and Wake subjects did not differ in their subjective ratings of photographs. However, for Repeated-Set photographs, Nap subjects demonstrated greater inter-session habituation in SCR and EMG but a trend toward lesser inter-session habituation in HRD. These group differences were absent for Novel-Set photographs. Group differences across all measures were greater for negative stimuli. Occurrence of SWS during the nap was associated with greater inter-session habituation of EMG whereas occurrence of REM was associated with lesser inter-session habituation of SCR to negative stimuli. Sleep may therefore promote emotional adjustment at the level of somatic responses. Physiological but not subjective inter-session habituation to aversive images was enhanced by a daytime nap.     

Sensation-seeking and preference for emotional visual stimuli

The Zuckerman Sensation-seeking Scale (SSS) was administered to 190 men and 197 women, who were also asked to choose 5 pictures out of a group of 21. Seven of these pictures had been rated as emotionally positive, 7 as emotionally neutral and 7 as emotionally negative. Choices of the high and low sensation-seeking groups were compared, and it was found that the high sensation-seekers had a stronger preference for the hegative stimuli than the lows, and the low sensation-seekers had a stronger preference for the positive stimuli than the highs. The results are discussed in terms of optimum level of arousal.