Does Self-Reassurance Reduce Neural and Self-Report Reactivity to Negative Life Events?

ABSTRACT: Whilst research has shown how self-criticism may increase both neural and self-report markers of negative emotion, less well-known is how self-reassurance-a compassionately-motivated cognitive self-relating style-may regulate negative emotion. Using fMRI, we invited participants to engage in self-criticism and self-reassurance toward written descriptions of negative life events (mistakes, setbacks, failures). Our results identify that neural markers of negative emotion and self-report markers of trial intensity during fMRI are down-regulated under conditions of self-reassurance, relative to self-criticism. Future work to control for autobiographical memory during this fMRI task is needed, as are controls for how well participants can engage in both thinking styles, to explore how memory/ta

SUBMITTER: Kim JJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8505763 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature