When someone shares their troubles with us, how do we decide how to respond? While decades of research has characterized how people talk about emotional events, less is known about how people choose to respond to others' distress. To address this issue, we bridged research from affective science and social psychology to develop the Regulator Beliefs about Social Regulation (RBSR) scale, which measures an individual's beliefs about the kinds of support distressed others might want and how they tend to act as social regulators of them. Three studies examined the nature of these beliefs and their impact on social interactions in close relationships. Study 1 used factor analyses to select 12 items for the RBSR scale that captured four theoretically meaningful and distinct beliefs. Study 2A showed that individuals with high RBSR scores are generally more emotionally expressive, better self-regulators, less lonely and experience more positive and less negative emotions. Studies 2B and Study 3A demonstrated that a regulator’s beliefs vary across situations and are sensitive to the intensity of a distressed target’s negative emotions. Study 3B found that, in real world interactions, the different kinds of beliefs assessed by the RBSR scale predicted target emotions, feelings of closeness and perceptions of their partner’s real-world regulatory behaviors. Taken together, this work is significant in at least two ways: Theoretically, it describes how beliefs about social regulation contribute to well-being. Methodologically, it offers a validated tool for assessing these beliefs across multiple kinds of social, affective, organizational and clinical contexts.

In what ways are social evaluations of others interdependent with what we think they believe about us? In the current study, we were interested in how social feedback changes how we think about a potential romantic partner, as well as how often we think about them. We hypothesized that the mentalizing network would play a role in both of these processes, given that we consider both how we feel about someone and how we think they feel about us when evaluating romantic interest. During an fMRI scan, participants watched dating profile videos of eight different targets, and assessed each target on romantic interest. Participants watched two videos of each target: one before receiving social feedback from the target, and one after. Participants also completed a resting state scan after viewing each set of eight videos. We found that the mentalizing network played a role in forming and updating evaluations of romantic interest. Specifically, neural representations in this network responded most strongly to social feedback that was incongruent with one’s initial evaluation, likely because our romantic interest in another person is at least partially dependent on how we believe they feel about us. Within the mentalizing network, the right TPJ and the dmPFC most strongly represented romantic interest at the beginning of an encounter. In addition, representations in the TPJ and the Precuneus changed more in response to incongruent feedback, while reactivation frequency in the TPJ changed more in response to congruent feedback, further demonstrating the importance of interdependence in social evaluations.

The present study investigated between-person differences in daily positive emotion dynamics and their associations with flourishing across two studies (Study 1: n=244, Study 2: n=265). Three between-person indices of daily positive emotion dynamics were created: average intensity, variability, and inertia. Using latent profile analysis, a data-driven technique that identifies subgroups (referred to as profiles) within a population, four common ways in which these three emotion dynamics cluster at the person level were identified. Testing for associations between flourishing and the observed profiles of emotion dynamics revealed that people with high levels of positive emotion that were stable over time were highest in flourishing, followed by low-intensity but variable positive emotions, followed by individuals with low-intensity positive emotions. By considering how three key emotion dynamic indices cluster within individuals, we find that understanding both the average intensity and the extent of stability in daily positive emotion is necessary for understanding flourishing.

In everyday life, our perceptions of others' traits are influenced by a combination of their actions and our relationship with them. We enrolled 142 participants in a virtual escape room to examine (a) whether an unfamiliar task changed perceptions of friends' traits, (b) which types of prior relationships influenced trait perceptions, and (c) the relative importance of perceptions of actions in assessing traits. Higher pregame similarity ratings led to increases in perceptions of competence, while higher pregame liking ratings led to increases in perceptions of sociability. In addition, objective performance mattered for competence ratings, whereas subjective perceptions of performance mattered for sociability ratings. Our findings demonstrate the importance of real-world relationships not only for how we change our beliefs about others' traits but also for perceptions of the very actions we use as evidence for those beliefs.

Accurately understanding others’ emotional states is fundamental to effective social functioning. While extensive research exists on how humans recognize different emotions, little is known about how people assess emotional intensity. Through a preliminary survey and seven multi-site studies (n = 2,866), we demonstrate that despite believing they gauge emotions accurately, systematic discrepancies emerge: individuals tend to rate others' emotions as more intense than those individuals rate themselves, particularly for negative emotions. This bias persists across text-based interactions, recorded videos, and live conversations, with both strangers and romantic partners. Interestingly, while people report preferring accurate judgments of their own emotional intensity, the discrepancy may serve adaptive functions, predicting higher empathic responses with strangers and greater relationship satisfaction in romantic relationships. These findings advance understanding of discrepancies in interpersonal emotional perception, highlighting their potential adaptive roles and providing insight into how they shape our social world and relationship outcomes.

BACKGROUND: Impaired emotion regulation (ER) contributes to major depression and suicidal ideation and behavior. ER is typically studied by explicitly directing participants to regulate, but this may not capture spontaneous tendencies of individuals with depression to engage ER in daily life. METHODS: In 82 participants with major depressive disorder, we examined the relationship of spontaneous engagement of ER to real-world responses to stress. We used a machine learning-derived neural signature reflecting neural systems that underlie cognitive reappraisal (an ER strategy) to identify reappraisal-related activity while participants recalled negative autobiographical memories under the following conditions: 1) unstructured recall; 2) distanced recall, a form of reappraisal; and 3) immersed recall (comparison condition). Participants also completed a week of ecological momentary assessment measuring daily stressors, suicidal ideation, and negative affect. RESULTS: Higher reappraisal signature output for the unstructured period, a proxy for the spontaneous tendency to engage ER, was associated with greater increases in suicidal ideation following stressors (b = 0.083, p = .041). Higher signature output for distanced recall, a proxy for the capacity to engage ER when directed, was associated with lower negative affect following stressors (b = 20.085, p = .029). Output for the immerse period was not associated with ecological momentary assessment outcomes. CONCLUSIONS: Findings suggest that in major depressive disorder, the spontaneous tendency to react to negative memories with attempts to reappraise may indicate greater reactivity to negative cues, while intact capacity to use reappraisal when directed may be associated with more adaptive responses to stress. These data have implications for understanding stress-related increases in suicide risk in depression.

While time flows uniformly, many factors can influence how experiences become organized in memory. The current study examined how causality and agency impact the temporal structure of memory for a virtual escape room game played with friends. We found that after controlling for veridical temporal distance, causally-related events were remembered as closer in time than unrelated events. This effect grew stronger after a consolidation period, with causally-connected memories showing greater temporal integration than memories that merely shared contextual overlap. Notably, within causally-related events, temporal memory was superior for events where game clues were found than when they were used to resolve ambiguity. We also demonstrated that participants who made greater in-game contributions to puzzle-solving showed better temporal memory compared to participants who contributed less. High contributors also showed increased temporal integration between contextually-related events in particular. Together, these findings highlight the role of causal connections in driving memory integration and extend prior work on agency and memory to real-world experiences.

To manage life’s stressors, we can self-regulate our emotions or seek social regulatory support. One such strategy is reappraisal, where individuals reframe their own negative emotions (ie self-reappraisal) or help others reframe their negative emotions (ie social-reappraisal). Here, we compared the neural mechanisms underlying self- and social-reappraisal of negative autobiographical memories using standard univariate contrasts, Bayes factor, and multivariate classifier approaches. Both self- and social-reappraisal recruited regions associated with control and mentalizing, such as dorsolateral and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex. However, social-reappraisal was qualitatively different from self-reappraisal in its recruitment of additional control and mentalizing regions, such as the right lateral prefrontal cortex, medial prefrontal cortex, and right temporal pole. Notably, multivariate patterns within regions associated with mentalizing—but not control—were distinguishable between self- and social-reappraisal, suggesting that different kinds of information are drawn upon when reappraising for self vs. others. Finally, both self- and social-reappraisal modulated activity in regions associated with affective responding and the perceptual representation of remembered scenes, including the mid-orbital frontal cortex, left insula, and posterior parahippocampal gyrus. Taken together, these data reveal the processes supporting self and social emotion regulation with implications for both basic and clinical research.

The study of how people regulate one another’s emotions has grown in recent years. Known variously as interpersonal emotion regulation and social emotion regulation, researchers in affective science have begun to develop theoretical models of and a diverse set of methodologies to study this phenomena. However, two aspects of the phenomena remain underspecified: a) target and regulator roles are often blurred and variable and b) the goal dynamics that guide social emotion regulation are social in nature – tenets that have been historically discussed in relationship science and developmental science. Here, we review relevant literature from affective, social, and developmental sciences to highlight underexplored questions related to fluctuating roles in social emotion regulation and heterogeneous and interdependent (often social) goals that meaningfully impact social emotion regulation in everyday life. Then, we provide brief methodological suggestions that illustrate new analytic approaches that can be utilized to help understand roles and goals better in social emotion regulation. By paying attention to both variable roles and the social nature of goals, we can build better models of social emotion regulation that are inclusive of the heterogeneous situations, while also adopting rigorous analytical methods that respect the social nature of SER and broaden our temporal resolution to examine the interplay of roles and goals across the lifespan.

Dysfunction in emotion regulation (ER) and autobiographical memory are components of major depressive disorder (MDD). However, little is known about how they mechanistically interact with mood disturbances in real time. Using machine learning-based neural signatures, we can quantify negative affect (NA), ER, and memory continuously to evaluate how these processes dynamically interact in MDD. Unmedicated individuals with MDD (N=45) and healthy volunteers (HV; N=38) completed a negative autobiographical memory functional magnetic resonance imaging task wherein they recalled, distanced from (an ER strategy), and immersed into memories. We used a negative affect signature (PINES) and an emotion regulation signature (ERS) to quantify moment-to-moment NA and ER. We then examined whether memory engagement, indexed by hippocampal activity, predicted subsequent change in PINES and ERS over time. During memory recall and immersion, greater hippocampal activity predicted increased PINES across groups. During distancing, greater hippocampal activity in HVs predicted increased ERS but not PINES. In MDD, greater hippocampal activity predicted increased PINES but not ERS. Findings suggest abnormalities in the real-time relationship between memory, NA, and ER in MDD. During distancing, as predicted, HVs showed an attenuation of the linkage between memory engagement and NA, and they had subsequent increases in ER following memory reactivation. In contrast, MDD was characterized by continued linkage between memory engagement and NA, without subsequent increases in ER. Deficits in engagement of ER and ineffective modulation of NA following negative memory recall may contribute to the mood disturbances in MDD and are potential targets for clinical intervention.

Conversations shape future behaviors, particularly among young adults. However, young adults vary widely in their susceptibility to peer influence. What neural processes relate to this susceptibility? We examined whether activity in brain regions associated with social rewards and making sense of others’ minds relates to a common health behavior—drinking, following conversations about alcohol. We studied ten social groups of college students (N = 104 students; 4760 total observations) across two university campuses. We collected whole-brain fMRI data while participants viewed photographs of peers with whom they tended to drink at varying frequencies. Next, using ecological momentary assessment, we tracked alcohol conversations and drinking twice daily for 28 days. On average, talking about alcohol was associated with a higher likelihood of next-day drinking. Controlling for baseline drinking, participants who responded more strongly to peers with whom they drank alcohol more frequently—in brain regions associated with social rewards and mentalizing—showed a stronger, positive association between alcohol conversations and next-day drinking. Conversely, stronger neural responses to peers with whom they drank less frequently decoupled associations between alcohol conversations and next-day drinking. We conceptually replicate prior findings linking conversations and drinking in an observational, longitudinal setting and provide new evidence that neural responses to peers moderate links between alcohol conversations and drinking behavior among young adults.

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is an effective treatment for alcohol use disorder (AUD). We hypothesized that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), a brain region implicated in cognitive control and goal-directed behavior, plays a role behavior change during CBT by facilitating regulation of craving. To examine this, treatment-seeking participants with AUD (N=22) underwent functional MRI scanning both before and after a 12-week single-arm trial of CBT, using a regulation of craving (ROC) fMRI task designed to measure an individual's ability to control alcohol craving and previously shown to engage the DLPFC. We found that both the number of heavy drinking days (NHDD, the primary clinical outcome) and the self-reported alcohol craving measured during the ROC paradigm were significantly reduced from pre- to post-CBT [NHDD: t=15.69, p<0.0001; alcohol craving: (F(1,21)=16.16; p=0.0006)]. Contrary to our hypothesis, there was no change in regulation effects on self-reported craving over time (F(1,21)=0.072; p=0.79), nor was there was a significant change in regulation effects over time on activity in any parcel. Searching the whole brain for neural correlates of reductions in drinking and craving after CBT, we found a significant 3-way interaction between the effects of cue-induced alcohol craving, cue-induced brain activity and timepoint of assessment (pre- or post-CBT) on NHDD in a parcel corresponding to area 46 of the right DLPFC (ß=-0.37, p=0.046, FDR corrected). Follow-up analyses showed that reductions in cue-induced alcohol craving from pre- to post-CBT were linearly related to reductions in alcohol cue-induced activity in area 46 only among participants who ceased heavy drinking during CBT (r=0.81, p=0.005) but not among those who continued to drink heavily (r=0.28, p=0.38). These results are consistent with a model in which CBT impacts heavy drinking by increasing the engagement of the DLPFC during cue-induced craving.

Self-views – or, how one perceives their own traits and values – change across social contexts. Yet, whether and how major societal events can alter self-views remains to be determined. In the current study (N = 193), we investigate whether a significant event – in this case, the 2020 U.S. presidential election – changes self-views. We also ask if the 2020 U.S. election acts similarly to an event boundary, and in turn impacts memory for self-views before the election (across an event boundary) vs after the election (within an event boundary). Including one timepoint before the election and three timepoints after it, we found that traits, values, and the valence of reported events changed more across the election than after it. When investigating memory for previous responses, we found that memory for ratings of values and the valence of events was worse across the election than after it, while memory for traits was unaffected. Our findings suggest that a) a significant event can substantially alter one’s self-views, and b) that the impact of an event boundary on memory for self-views may differ depending on how relevant the remembered content is to the event. More broadly, the findings suggest that moments of major societal change can also change how we view ourselves.

Background: Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a severe mental illness, with high rates of co-morbid major depression and suicidality. Despite the importance of optimizing treatment in BPD, little is known about how neural processes relate to individual treatment response. The present study examines how baseline regional brain blood oxygen level dependent (BOLD) activation during a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) task of emotion regulation is related to treatment response following a randomized clinical trial of six months of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) or Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor (SSRI) treatment.Methods: Unmedicated individuals with BPD (N=35), reporting suicidal behavior or self-injury in the prior six months, underwent an fMRI task in which negative personal memories were presented and they were asked to either distance (i.e., experience the memory from a third-person perspective, a regulation strategy) or immerse (i.e., experience the memory from a first-person perspective). Patients were then randomized to six months of either DBT (N=16) or SSRI (N=19) treatment. Baseline and post-treatment depression severity was scored. Results: BOLD activity in prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate, insula, and dorsal striatum was associated with distancing compared with immerse. Baseline activation during distancing in dorsolateral and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC, vlPFC) differentially predicted antidepressant treatment response across the SSRI and DBT groups, with higher activity predicting better response in the SSRI group, and lower activity predicting better response in the DBT group. Discussion: The present findings indicate that greater dlPFC and vlPFC engagement during emotion regulation may predict more antidepressant benefit more from SSRI treatment, whereas lower engagement may predict more antidepressant response to DBT treatment. These results suggest different antidepressant mechanisms of action of SSRIs and DBT that may allow pretreatment fMRI to guide individualized antidepressant treatment selection.

Political partisanship is often conceived as a lens through which people view politics. Behavioral research has distinguished two types of "partisan lenses"-policy-based and identity-based-that may influence peoples' perception of political events. Little is known, however, about the mechanisms through which partisan discourse appealing to policy beliefs or targeting partisan identities operate within individuals. We addressed this question by collecting neuroimaging data while participants watched videos of speakers expressing partisan views. A "partisan lens effect" was identified as the difference in neural synchrony between each participant's brain response and that of their partisan ingroup vs. outgroup. When processing policy-based messaging, a partisan lens effect was observed in socio-political reasoning and affective responding brain regions. When processing negative identity-based attacks, a partisan lens effect was observed in mentalizing and affective responding brain regions. These data suggest that the processing of political discourse that appeals to different forms of partisanship is supported by related but distinguishable neural-and therefore psychological-mechanisms, which may have implications for how we characterize partisanship and ameliorate its deleterious impacts.

BACKGROUND:Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is the prototypical disorder of emotion dysregulation. We have previously shown that patients with BPD are impaired in their capacity to engage cognitive reappraisal, a frequently employed adaptive emotion regulation strategy. METHODS:Here, we report on the efficacy of longitudinal training in cognitive reappraisal to enhance emotion regulation in patients with BPD. Specifically, the training targeted psychological distancing, a reappraisal tactic whereby negative stimuli are viewed dispassionately as though experienced by an objective, impartial observer. At each of 5 sessions over 2 weeks, 22 participants with BPD (14 female) and 22 healthy control participants (13 female) received training in psychological distancing and then completed a widely used picture-based reappraisal task. Self-reported negative affect ratings and functional magnetic resonance imaging data were acquired at the first and fifth sessions. In addition to behavioral analyses, we performed whole-brain pattern expression analyses using independently defined patterns for negative affect and cognitive reappraisal implementation for each session. RESULTS:Patients with BPD showed a decrease in negative affect pattern expression following reappraisal training, reflecting a normalization in neural activity. However, they did not show significant change in behavioral self-reports. CONCLUSIONS:To our knowledge, this study represents the first longitudinal functional magnetic resonance imaging examination of task-based cognitive reappraisal training. Using a brief, proof-of-concept design, the results suggest a potential role for reappraisal training in the treatment of patients with BPD.

The Future of Affective Science Special Issues illuminate where the field of Affective Science is headed in coming years, highlighting exciting new directions for research. Many of the articles in the issues emphasized the importance of studying emotion regulation, and specifically, social emotion regulation. This commentary draws on these articles to argue that future research needs to more concretely focus on the social aspects of social emotion regulation, which have been underexplored in affective science. Specifically, we discuss the importance of focusing on social goals, strategies and tactics, and outcomes relevant to social emotion regulation interactions, more closely considering these processes for all individuals involved. To do so, we draw on research from neighboring subdisciplines of psychology that have focused on the social aspects of interactions. Moreover, we underscore the need to better integrate components of the process model of social emotion regulation and approach empirical inquiry more holistically, in turn illuminating how piecemeal investigations of these processes might lead to an incomplete or incorrect understanding of social emotion regulation. We hope this commentary supplements the research in the special issues, further highlighting ways to advance the field.

Political partisanship is often conceived as a lens through which we view politics. Behavioral research has distinguished two types of “partisan lenses” - Policy-based and Affective – that may influence our perception of political events. Little is known, however, about the mechanisms through which partisanship operates within individuals. We addressed this question by collecting neuroimaging data while participants watched videos of speakers expressing partisan views. A “partisan lens effect” was identified as the difference in neural synchrony between each participant’s brain response and that of their partisan ingroup vs. outgroup. A policy-based partisanship lens effect was observed in socio-political reasoning and affective responding brain regions. An affective partisanship lens effect was observed in mentalizing and affective responding brain regions. These data suggest that policy-based and affective partisanship are supported by related but distinguishable neural and therefore psychological mechanisms, which may have implications for how we characterize partisanship and ameliorate its deleterious impacts.

During the #MeToo movement, the perceived morality of public figures changed in light of sexual assault allegations against them. Here, we asked how these changes were influenced by the perceived severity of alleged actions and by how well-known and well-liked were the public figures. Perceived morality was assessed by measuring (im)moral language usage in 1.4 million Tweets about 50 male public figures accused of sexual assault. Using natural language processing to analyze the tweets, we found that liking of public figures mitigated perceived immorality for less severe allegations, but had little effect on perceived immorality for more severe allegations. The persistence of negative perceptions one year later was related to liking and familiarity for the public figure, not allegation severity. These results suggest that in real-world contexts, we can forgive less harmful actions for people we like, but may not be able to if their actions are more harmful; over time, however, liking for others predicts lasting negative impressions of their moral misdeeds.

It is critical to support healthy development of alcohol-related habits, particularly in contexts with heightened risk such as college campuses. Mindfulness-based strategies are frequently used in interventions to reduce substance use in clinical populations, but their utility as a preventative strategy among emerging adults is less clear. Combining multivariate neuroimaging, intervention, and experience sampling methodologies, we tested the degree to which mindful attention reduces alcohol cravings in the laboratory and consumption in daily life in a sample of college students. Students completed a mindful attention task towards alcohol in an fMRI scanner followed by a 28-day, smartphone-based, experience sampling intervention. We leveraged functional neuroimaging and machine learning to develop a neural measure (signature) of mindful attention that enabled us to examine moment-to-moment fluctuations and individual differences in effective implementation of mindful attention. In the laboratory, mindfully attending to alcohol decreased craving, particularly among people who more strongly expressed the mindful attention signature. In daily life, the mindful attention intervention increased mindful responses to alcohol and decreased lagged alcohol consumption through two distinct pathways: mindful responses directly influenced alcohol consumption and indirectly influenced it by reducing cravings for alcohol. Moreover, individuals who more strongly expressed the mindful attention signature benefitted the most from the intervention. Broadly, our study highlights how mindful attention can reduce alcohol consumption among emerging adults in college via a scalable smartphone-based intervention.