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An emotional regulation advantage in people with high psychological Suzhi—evidence from ERP research

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Abstract

Emotional regulation, a key mechanism for promoting emotional health, has been found to play an important mediating role between psychological suzhi and emotional health, and there is a close relationship between psychological suzhi and emotion regulation effects. However, most studies on the relationship between psychological suzhi and emotion regulation effects have focused only on subjective experiences and changes in peripheral nervous system indicators, failing to examine central neurophysiological indicators of emotion regulation effects. The close relationship between psychological suzhi and emotion regulation has not yet been sufficiently revealed, and this has, to some extent, limited the in-depth exploration of the mechanisms of psychological suzhi. Therefore, to examine the relationship between psychological suzhi and changes in the nervous system surrounding emotion regulation, we aimed to deepen the research on the relationship between psychological suzhi and emotion regulation and thus to further reveal the mechanism of the role of psychological suzhi. This study used event-related potential (ERP) technology with a high temporal resolution to examine the electrophysiological differences in the use of two emotion regulation strategies, cognitive reappraisal and expressive inhibition, for negative emotion regulation among college students. The results showed that the late positive potential (LPP) amplitude of the high psychological suzhi group was significantly decreased beginning in the early time window (500–1000 ms), while the LPP amplitude of the low psychological suzhi group was significantly decreased beginning in the middle time window (1000–1500 ms). In the early, middle and late time windows, the negative emotion regulation effect of cognitive reappraisal in the group with high psychological suzhi was significantly better than that of the group with low psychological suzhi. The regulatory effect of cognitive reappraisal of negative emotion was significantly greater in college students with high psychological suzhi than in college students with low psychological suzhi.This study has enlightening significance for further research on the mechanism of psychological suzhi.

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Data availability

The dataset analysed for the present study and the photographs used in the photograph rating are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the students and teachers who participated, and we are grateful to faculty and staff at the Research Center of Mental Health Education of Southwest University for their generous support and valuable advice.

Funding

This research was supported by the Southwest University Research-Oriented Faculty Construction Project (2020–2021).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Educational Science, Zhengzhou Normal University, Zhengzhou, 460045, China

    Zhaoxia Pan

  2. Faculty of Psychology, Research Center for Mental Health Education, Southwest University, Chongqing, 400715, China

    Dajun Zhang

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Contributions

D.Z. and Z.P., contributed to the conception and design of the study. Z.P., organized the database. Z.P., performed the statistical analysis and wrote the first draft of the manuscript. All authors contributed to manuscript revision and read and approved the submitted version.

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Correspondence to Zhaoxia Pan.

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This study involving human participants was reviewed and approved by the Ethics Committee for Scientific Research Institute of Psychology, Southwest University. The participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.

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Pan, Z., Zhang, D. An emotional regulation advantage in people with high psychological Suzhi—evidence from ERP research. Curr Psychol (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-024-05739-6

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