Repeated Experiential Emotion Regulation and Cognitive Reappraisal: Impact on Emotional Experience and Physiological Responses

Repeated Experiential Emotion Regulation and Cognitive Reappraisal: Impact on Emotional Experience and Physiological Responses | Authorea try { document.documentElement.classList.add('js'); } catch (e) { } var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'G-8VDV14Y67G']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); Skip to main content Preprints Collections Wiley Open Research IET Open Research Ecological Society of Japan All Collections About About Authorea FAQs Contact Us Quick Search anywhere Search for preprint articles, keywords, etc. Search Search ADVANCED SEARCH SCROLL This is a preprint and has not been peer reviewed. Data may be preliminary. 4 June 2025 V1 Latest version Share on Repeated Experiential Emotion Regulation and Cognitive Reappraisal: Impact on Emotional Experience and Physiological Responses Authors : Yulin Wang , Elke Vlemincx , Luis Carlo Bulnes , Debo Dong , Johan De Mey , Daniele Marinazzo , James Gross , and Marie Vandekerckhove 0000-0001-7955-2235 [email protected] Authors Info & Affiliations https://doi.org/10.22541/au.174900990.01231738/v1 458 views 292 downloads Contents Abstract Information & Authors Metrics & Citations View Options References Figures Tables Media Share Abstract In the present study, we test the hypothesis whether experiential emotion regulation works more in-depth after repeated regulation, while top-down cognitive emotion regulation would have an initial advantage, which will decrease over time. Participants (N = 58; all women) viewed negative, arousing pictures three times. One group was randomly assigned to apply experiential emotion regulation, the other group, cognitive reappraisal. A ‘watch’ control condition, in which participants were instructed to focus on the colours in the picture, served as a within-subject control condition for both groups. Outcome measures included self-reported negative emotional experience, facial expression (EMG) of the corrugator and zygomaticus muscles, skin conductance, and heart rate. In line with our expectations, relative to the control ‘watch’ condition, the first instance of experiential emotion regulation was associated with higher subjective negative emotional experience, whereas cognitive reappraisal was associated with lower subjective negative emotional experience and increased positive facial expressivity. Repeating the same emotion regulation strategy resulted in a steeper relative decrease of negative emotional experience for experiential emotion regulation relative to cognitive appraisal. At the third instance of emotion regulation there was no significant difference in negative emotional experience between experiential emotion regulation and cognitive reappraisal. The findings provide insight into the mechanisms underlying experiential emotion regulation versus cognitive reappraisal. Article Repeated Experiential Emotion Regulation and Cognitive Reappraisal: Impact on Emotional Experience and Physiological Responses Yulin Wang 1,2# , Elke Vlemincx 3 , Luis Carlo Bulnes 1,4 , Debo Dong 5 , Johan De Mey 6 , Daniele Marinazzo 2 , James Gross 7# , Marie Vandekerckhove 1, 8# 1 Department of Clinical and Lifespan Psychology, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium2 Department of Data Analysis, Faculty of Psychological and Educational Sciences, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium3 Department of Health Sciences, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Amsterdam Public Health, Amsterdam Movement Sciences, Amsterdam, The Netherlands4 Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Consciousness, Cognition and Computation Group (CO3), Center for Research in Cognition & Neurosciences, ULB Neuroscience Institute, Brussels, Belgium5 The Clinical Hospital of Chengdu Brain Science Institute, MOE Key Lab for Neuroinformation, Center for Information in Medicine, School of life Science and technology, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China6 Department of Radiology, Universitair Ziekenhuis Brussel, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium7 Stanford Psychophysiology Laboratory, Stanford University, 450 Jane Stanford Way, Building 420 Stanford, CA 94305 United States# Corresponding Authors:Yulin WangEmail: [email protected] ; Tel: +86 15310605189Marie VandekerckhoveEmail: [email protected] ; Tel: +32 26292529 Keywords: Experiential; Reappraisal; Repeated effects; EMG; Skin conductance response; Heart rate Abstract In the present study, we test the hypothesis whether experiential emotion regulation works more in-depth after repeated regulation, while top-down cognitive emotion regulation would have an initial advantage, which will decrease over time. Participants (N = 58; all women) viewed negative, arousing pictures three times. One group was randomly assigned to apply experiential emotion regulation, the other group, cognitive reappraisal. A ‘watch’ control condition, in which participants were instructed to focus on the colours in the picture, served as a within-subject control condition for both groups. Outcome measures included self-reported negative emotional experience, facial expression (EMG) of the corrugator and zygomaticus muscles, skin conductance, and heart rate. In line with our expectations, relative to the control ‘watch’ condition, the first instance of experiential emotion regulation was associated with higher subjective negative emotional experience, whereas cognitive reappraisal was associated with lower subjective negative emotional experience and increased positive facial expressivity. Repeating the same emotion regulation strategy resulted in a steeper relative decrease of negative emotional experience for experiential emotion regulation relative to cognitive appraisal. At the third instance of emotion regulation there was no significant difference in negative emotional experience between experiential emotion regulation and cognitive reappraisal. The findings provide insight into the mechanisms underlying experiential emotion regulation versus cognitive reappraisal. Introduction As everyday life is filled with ups and downs, joys and sorrows, an inevitable question arises: how do you deal with these daily emotional events? This question leads to an investigation of emotion regulation, defined as the ability to face and respond to ongoing emotional events and experiences. Emotion regulation entails different processes involved with initiating, inhibiting, and modulating one’s emotional responses. Importantly, which emotion regulation strategy is adaptive and when is it adaptive remains one of the most crucial questions within the domain of emotion regulation [1,2]. Research abundantly confirms that fostering adaptive emotion regulation improves mental health, resilience, interpersonal relationships, work performance, and well-being [3,4]. Furthermore, the observation that past emotional stress no longer interferes with one’s daily functioning in the present, reflects the adaptiveness of an emotion regulation strategy [5]. In contrast to past research, which has mainly focused on identifying adaptive- versus maladaptive emotion regulation strategies, recent studies have taken a more differentiated, contextualized, and individualized approach [1]. In the present study, we will discuss the effectiveness of both single- versus repeated bottom-up experiential emotion regulation versus top-down cognitive reappraisal. Experiential emotion regulation Experiential emotion regulation has been conceptualized by Vandekerckhove [11] in order to validate empirically one of the most crucial working mechanisms within experiential-client-centered and emotion-focused psychotherapy practices. As a complementary bottom-up emotion regulation strategy, experiential emotion regulation encompasses the shift in attention to one’s bodily felt affective experience of an emotional event [9, 10, 11]. Experiential emotion regulation focuses on the here-and-now bodily felt affective experience as an adaptive signaling mechanism. Deriving from humanistic experiential psychotherapy and theory [10, 32, 33], central to this experiential emotion regulation approach is facilitating access and exploration of the bodily felt affective experience as a source of the meaning of ongoing daily events [11]. In the first phase of experiential emotion regulation, attention is allocated to the rudimentary affective, sensory responses of an event that precedes cognitive, reflective processing, giving rise to experiential consciousness and awareness [10, 34, 35], and its verbalization or ‘experiential expression’ in a second phase [10,11]. Experiential emotion regulation invites the individual to be compassionate towards the present by adopting an accepting and welcoming non-judgmental attitude towards the present emotional stressor somatosensory affective experience and its concrete representations [10,11]. It precedes the process of in-depth awareness and focus on current bodily felt affect which has an implicit regulatory impact on negative affect and associated arousal [3]. This experiential awareness of an emotional stressor reflects a broader, at first unclear, unrecognizable discomfort, which the whole problem represents in the body (33). This unreflective, here-and-now ‘awareness expresses an early stage of autonomic-phenomenal anoetic consciousness, which is primarily affective and based on ancient limbic and procedural neural systems that encode primary somatosensory affect [34]. While trying not to be overwhelmed by the intense emotions, in daily life, individuals have difficulty focusing on the information provided by their bodily affective sensations that are aroused by stressful events. Therefore, it should be helpful to train an experiential way of emotion regulation, by examining the shift between people’s attention to their bodily felt affective experiential consciousness and the expression of it, while embracing a welcoming and accepting attitude towards it [10,11]. As experiential emotion regulation involves bottom-up affective in-depth processing, it is expected to intensify negative affective experience at first, but to result in a stronger decrease in emotional intensity of the stressful event in the long term [11,36]. For instance, existential challenges – such as a personal injury, an experience of failure, or grieving for a beloved person – may need a more bottom-up experiential approach and more time to process, regulate, resolve, and recover from it. Pertaining to the training of experiential emotion regulation, a study from our lab showed that it’s training of experiential emotion regulation resulted in less impaired sleep physiology after a failure event in comparison to cognitive reappraisal [11]. Another, fMRI study of our lab on the training of experiential emotion regulation versus cognitive defusion, demonstrated that experiential emotion regulation recruited brain areas such as the angular gyrus and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) which are areas that are involved in multisensory and affective information processing [9]. Crucially, during experiential emotion regulation, relative to simply watching negative emotional stimuli without trying to regulate, a larger interaction between the anterior cingulate cortex and left amygdala resulted in less negative emotion [9]. Cognitive defusion, on the other hand, decreased activation in bottom-up subcortical areas including the amygdala, the brainstem, and the thalamus. Yet, an important question in actual emotion regulation research remains how and why it would be more adaptive to think differently about the emotional stressor as in cognitive reappraisal, one time or repeated times, or how and why would it be more adaptive to re-experience bodily felt affective experience in a single or repeated way [11–13, 14]? In the following, we will discuss the effectiveness of both single- versus repeated bottom-up experiential emotion regulation versus top-down cognitive reappraisal of bottom-up visual generated stressful events. Cognitive reappraisal Cognitive reappraisal is one of the most researched, adaptive, and flexible top-down emotion regulation strategies applied in behavioral psychotherapy. Cognitive reappraisal alters how we attend to or interpret the cognitive meaning of an emotional event [6–8]. Cognitive reappraisal refers to “changing how we appraise the situation we are in to alter its emotional significance, either by changing how we think about the situation or our capacity to manage the demands it poses” ([15], p. 14). Cognitive reappraisal is an antecedent-focused emotion regulation strategy, after which the automatic generation of an emotional reaction becomes subsequently controlled by cognitive reinterpretation [16–19]. When used to downregulate negative emotions, cognitive reappraisal relates to higher levels of positive emotion, less negative emotion [20, 24], improved interpersonal functioning, and enhanced levels of well-being [25, 26]. Based on its cognitive controlling premise, cognitive reappraisal emphasizes changing the cognitive meaning associated with the daily emotional stressor resulting in an immediate decrease of emotional intensity [16, 27, 28], attenuating associated neural markers (e.g., amygdala) [29,30]. For instance, a friend neglects your greetings. Thinking that your friend must have been too distracted to notice you, is more helpful than thinking your friend is angry or indifferent towards you. When used repeatedly, reappraisal appears to maintain or even increase its effectiveness. For instance, in a study on the repeated- and long-term impact of cognitive reappraisal via perspective-taking (e.g., participants imagined that the emotional event occurred far away or a long time ago, or both), the amygdala’s response did not attenuate after one time of cognitive reappraisal but only after four times. Another study indicated that only the repeated, compared to the single, deployment of cognitive reappraisal further reduced negative feelings associated with stronger dorsolateral- and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex responses one day later [39]. The present study The aim of the present study was to explore the distinctive effects of repeated bottom-up experiential emotion regulation versus top-down cognitive reappraisal. Compared to a control condition, we hypothesized that the first instance of experiential emotion regulation would increase negative emotional experience, skin conductance responses, heart rate, and corrugator activity while decreasing zygomaticus activity (Hypothesis 1). We expected the opposite pattern for the first instance of cognitive reappraisal (Hypothesis 2). With respect to the impact of repeated regulation, we expected that repeated (from Time 1 to Time 3) experiential emotion regulation would decrease negative emotional experience, skin conductance responses, heart rate, and corrugator activity, and increase zygomaticus activity (Hypothesis 3). In contrast, we did not expect that cognitive reappraisal show such temporal trends (Hypothesis 4). Finally, we tested whether three times of repeated experiential emotion regulation, compared to three times of cognitive reappraisal, would result in lower negative emotional experience, skin conductance responses, heart rate, corrugator activity, and higher zygomaticus activity (Hypothesis 5). Method In line with the Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Guidelines, in the method section, we report how we determined our sample size, data exclusions, and all measures in the study. All data and study materials are available and can be requested by the first author. For the present research or manuscript we did not use AI and AI-assisted technologies. Participants Previous studies found that women exhibit more intense emotional and physiological reactivity than men [46,47]. Therefore, the present study avoided possible confounds of gender differences [36, 48, 49] by comparing the repeated effects of experiential emotion regulation and cognitive reappraisal in female participants only. Sample size calculation conducted with G*Power 3 [50], to test a within-between interaction with a power of 0.8, effect size of 0.15, an alpha level of 0.05, 6 repeated measures, and 2 groups, yielded a target sample size of 50. Sixty-nine healthy bachelor students of the Vrije Universiteit Brussels (VUB) participated and were compensated by 2 course credits. Participants who demonstrated neurological, psychiatric, or medical illnesses or syndromes and substance addiction were excluded. Participants were randomly assigned to one of two experimental groups: the experiential emotion regulation group (N=35) or the cognitive reappraisal group (N=34). Due to technical problems (e.g., trigger interface running out of battery, bad contacts of electrodes, allergies to adhesive), 11 participants were excluded from data analysis. Finally, in the experiential emotion regulation group, 28 participants (age: 18.36 ± 0.49 years) were included, and in the cognitive reappraisal; 30 participants were included (age: 18.53 ± 1.04 years). All participants provided their informed consent. The study was approved by the Ethics Committee at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. The study was not preregistered. Measures Trait measures To control for individual differences, the following questionnaires were administered: 1). Emotional Approach Coping Scale (EACS, [51], Dutch version) to assess emotional approach defined by emotional processing and emotional expression. The EACS contains 16 items, and each item contains a 4-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (never) to 4 (always). 2). The Acceptance and Action Questionnaire II measures experiential avoidance and psychological inflexibility (AAQ II [ 52]). The AAQ II consists of seven items, with a 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (never true) to 7 (always true). 3). The Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) assesses the tendency to regulate emotions in two ways: (a) cognitive reappraisal and (b) expressive suppression (ERQ [25], Dutch version. The ERQ consists of 10 items, and each item was answered by the participants on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). 4). The 20-ltem Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS-20 [53]) assesses different components such as (a) Difficulty of Describing Feelings, (b) Difficulty of Identifying Feeling, (c) Externally-Oriented Thinking (the tendency of individuals to focus their attention externally). The TAS consists of 20 items, with a 5-point Likert scale for each item from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). 5). The Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire measuring cognitive coping strategies (CERQ [54]). The CERQ consists of 36 items, and each item was answered by the participants on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (never) to 5 (always). All these questionnaires were first created as a bundle via LimeSurvey (https://www.limesurvey.org/). All the above-mentioned questionnaires have high internal consistency and test–retest reliability, as well as convergent and discriminant validity. Subjective ratings Subjective ratings of negative emotional experience were assessed on a 7-point scale from 1 (not negative at all) to 7 (very negative). Emotion-expressive behavior Emotion-expressive behavior was measured using facial EMG [57]. Muscle potential changes of the Frontalis muscle (left corrugator supercilii, ‘frown’) and the masseter muscle (left zygomaticus Major, ’smile’) were assessed, both on the left side. These two targeted muscles have been associated with negative and positive emotions, respectively [24,58]. Electrodes were standard 24 mm Ag-AgCl electrodes. Electrode placement was in accordance with the detailed instructions in the Bio-trace manual. Specifically, to place the electrodes on the frontalis muscle and to find the two wrinkles that appeared just above the nose in the middle of the forehead, participants were instructed to “please frown or look angry”. Then the red electrode was attached to the left wrinkle and the black electrode to the left of the red electrode. Correspondingly, to place the electrodes on the Masseter muscle, to smile to find a wrinkle appear in the left corner of the mouth, participants were instructed. Next, the red electrode to this wrinkle was attached. To attach the black electrode, we instructed participants to “please bite down hard.” Then we saw a muscle tense up in the cheek underneath the cheekbone. We then found the location to the left and under the red electrode that was neither on the biting muscle nor on the cheekbone to attach the black electrode. The EMG sampling rate was 2048 per second. A bandpass filter from 20 Hz to 500 Hz was applied during the online recording. Autonomic measures Heart rate . Electrocardiography was assessed with a 3-lead electrocardiogram (ECG). Electrodes were standard 55 mm Ag-AgCl electrodes. The positive electrode was placed on the lower left rib cage, while the negative electrode was placed on the distal end of the right collarbone. The ground electrode was placed on the distal end of the left collarbone. The ECG was sampled and recorded at a rate of 256 samples per second. Skin conductance. Skin conductance was sampled at a rate of 32 samples per second using 24-bit resolution, which was able to register changes of less than 0.0001 microSiemens. Two electrodes were attached to the distal phalanges of the middle and the ring finger of the left hand. Emotion regulation instructions To ensure that participants understood the different emotion regulation instructions, a training session for all participants was provided, based on validated training protocols for both experiential emotion regulation and cognitive reappraisal. First, participants received the training documents developed by our lab containing detailed explanations about experiential emotion regulation and cognitive reappraisal, respectively, as well as specific instructions about how to implement the emotion regulation strategies and the control condition in the experiment. To ensure that the emotion regulation training was successful, participants were asked to report their emotional experience towards the pictures, how difficult they found the task, and how well they thought they performed the task. Participants were also encouraged to ask questions about the use of emotion regulation strategies to process the pictures. Afterward, participants received a 5-minute audio training to further guide them through the process of experiential emotion regulation, or cognitive reappraisal. One group was trained in experiential emotion regulation by learning how to orient attention towards the affective bodily sensations they experience in response to each picture: “Focus your attention on the bodily felt affective experience you get from the event in the picture, let the situation work on you and become aware of your bodily experienced feelings. Take your time to notice which bodily felt affective experience you have in a welcoming, compassionate, and accepting way” [10, 11, 59]. In the other group, cognitive reappraisal was trained using the following instructions based on previous research [29, 30, 60]: “Please give another interpretation for the situation in the picture so that you can change the emotional meaning of the picture to feel better. For example, a man found dead on the ground with a policeman/policewoman standing by could be interpreted as the tracking of a serial killer, leading to a big breakthrough rather than a solely miserable scene of people being killed by a gunshot.” Design and stimuli A mixed between-subjects design was used in which participants were randomly allocated to one of two groups. Both groups completed three blocks of emotion regulation exercises and three control blocks while watching negative pictures in a counterbalanced order. For one group, emotion regulation consisted of experiential emotion regulation, for the other group, the emotion regulation consisted of cognitive reappraisal. The control condition involved no instructed emotion regulation as participants were instructed to focus on the colors in the pictures [24] (see Figure 1). A set of 40 negative pictures was selected from the International Affective Picture System (IAPS; [61]) with comparable valence (unpleasant/neutral, 2.29 ± 0.77) and arousal (exciting/calm, 5.78 ± 0.77). The pictures were randomly allocated to the emotion regulation blocks or the control blocks, but were fixed between participants; all participants watched one set of pictures in the emotion regulation block and the other in the control block. The arousal and valence levels of the pictures in the emotion regulation condition were 5.66 ± 2.15 and 2.65 ± 1.46, respectively. The arousal and valence levels of the pictures in the control condition were 5.64 ± 2.13 and 2.34 ± 1.44, respectively. The pictures were displayed on a monitor with a resolution of 1024 × 768 pixels, projected onto a screen of our experimental computer.Figure 1. Experimental design and procedure. A. Timeline of the experimental procedure for each participant. One week before the start of the experiment, participants were asked to fill in the online questionnaires. In the lab, participants received emotion regulation training for 20 minutes, after which they practiced to become familiar with the task procedure. After the practice phase, participants started the actual testing, which included two task sessions with a 15-minute break in between. Participants also received a debriefing after the testing. B. Block structure within each task session. Each block consisted of 20 trials and started with a longer instruction (8s) reminding the participants about the detailed instruction for each condition. Task session 1 consisted of two blocks of emotion regulation and two blocks of the control condition, and task session 2 consisted of one emotion regulation and one control block. C. Trial structure within the experimental block of each group. Each trial started with a visual cue (“Watch” in the control blocks and “Experiential emotion regulation” or “Cognitive reappraisal” in the emotion regulation blocks). Each cue was displayed for 0.5 seconds, followed by a 0.1-s interval. Afterward, a white fixation cross (1s) was shown, followed by a 0.5-s interval and, a 9-s presentation of the picture. Dependent on the cue that preceded the picture, participants were asked to either passively watch the picture (control) or actively regulate their emotions by either experiential emotion regulation (“Experiential emotion regulation”) or by reinterpretation (“Cognitive reappraisal”) during the picture presentation period. Afterwards, subjects rated their negative emotional experience (3s) on a scale from 1 (“not negative at all”) to 7 (“very negative”). Finally, a black screen was presented (2-4 s) to conclude the trial and allow a mental cool-down period before participants entered the next trial. All the described materials and reported and study analysis will be available and can be requested by contacting the first author. Procedure Participants were tested at the same location and the same time of day, with the emotion regulation training starting at 13:30. As indicated in Figure 1A, after completing the trait questionnaires, the training, and practice of the emotion regulation task, participants were led to the recording room. The experimenter explained the procedure and attached all sensors. Participants were instructed to sit still for a 3-minute resting state, after which they received instructions on the screen to start the task sessions. Two task sessions were separated by a 15-minute break. The first task session included two emotion regulation blocks and two control blocks. The second task session included one emotion regulation block and one control block. Each block consisted of 20 trials and started with a longer instruction (8s) reminding the participants about the detailed instruction for each condition. Within each block, each trial (see Figure 1C) started with the cue (“Watch,” “Experiential emotion regulation”, or “Cognitive reappraisal”). Each cue was displayed for 0.5s. After a 0.1-s interval, a white fixation cross (1s) was shown, followed by a 0.5-s interval. Next, a negative picture was presented (9s). Dependent on the cue that preceded the picture, participants were asked to either simply view the picture by paying attention to the colors in the picture and let any emotions they feel come and go naturally (“Watch”) or actively regulate their emotions by either experiential emotion regulation (“Experiential emotion regulation”) or by reinterpretation (“Cognitive reappraisal”) during the image presentation period. Afterward, subjects rated their negative emotional experience (3s). Finally, a black screen was presented (2-4s) to conclude the trial, and to allow for a mental cool-down period before participants entered the next trial. To check whether the participants successfully used the induced emotion regulation strategies, the experimenter carefully assessed whether participants could process the IAPS photos according to the given instructions. At the end of the experiment, all electrodes were removed, and the participants received a debriefing from the experimenter. BioTrace+ was used for physiological data acquisition and parameter extraction. E-prime was used for stimulus presentation. Data reduction and analysis Before parameter extraction with BioTrace+ software, the recorded signals were visually inspected, and episodes with artifacts were excluded from further processing. Parameters during the picture presentation were extracted for each of the six blocks: three emotion regulation blocks and three control blocks. Emotional experience The subjective ratings of negative emotional experience were exported from E-prime to obtain mean values across pictures for each of the six blocks, which were then transformed from a 5-point scale to a Likert scale from 1 (not negative at all) to 100 (very negative) [62]. All data were accounted for with no data loss. Emotion-expressive behavior All raw EMG signals (corrugator and zygomatic channels) during the picture presentation (not during the fixation and rating period), were integrated into amplitude signals by using the root mean square method (RMS) with an epoch size of 1/16 s, and subsequently averaged across all 20 trials for each block. Autonomic responses Heart rate. Heart rate was calculated by the inverse of the time between the R-peaks in the ECG signal. Mean heart rate values in beats per minute were calculated for time windows starting from the onset of the picture until 9 s after the onset for all 20 trials within each block. Skin conductance response (SCR). The SCR (in microSiemens) to each picture was calculated by subtracting the average skin conductance level before the picture onset (baseline) from the maximum value of the skin conductance during the 9-s picture presentation. A baseline of 2.1s was retained for each trial (see the light blue area in Figure 1B). This period spanned from 2.1 seconds before the picture presentation to the time of the picture onset, including the 0.5-s interval with the short instruction (e.g. “Watch”), the 0.1s of the subsequent ‘wait’ interval, the 1s fixation cross window and a final 0.5-s ‘wait’ interval (see Figure 1B). Note that before the statistical analysis, SCRs were transformed using log10 (SCR + 1) to reduce skewness [63] and subsequently averaged across all 20 trials for each block. Statistical analyses Normality of the dependent variables in our dataset was tested by the Shapiro-Wilk test, using an alpha level of 0.05. To test the differences in emotion regulation ability, as measured by the trait questionnaires between the experiential emotion regulation group and the cognitive reappraisal group, t-tests for independent samples were conducted with an alpha level of 0.05 (two-tailed). Outliers in physiological parameters were detected using an absolute deviation around the median with b = 1.4826 [64]. Some of the outliers in physiological parameters were eliminated from the dataset as the outliers were due to incorrectly recorded data [65], while outliers that could not be attributed to incorrect recording of data remained in the data set. Analyses for each highlighted physiology parameter were performed with and without outliers. Since excluding the outliers did not change the interpretation of the main and interaction effects results, analyses were performed with the inclusion of outliers [24]. Pearson bivariate correlations were conducted to analyze the associations between the dependent variables. A correlation matrix of all dependent variables is displayed in the Supplementary Table 1. Given the low correlations (-0.34 ≤ r ≤ 0.26, not significant) between the dependent variables, a single ANOVA test for each dependent variable is favored over a MANOVA test [66]. Hence, to test the effects of repeated emotion regulation (experiential emotion regulation versus cognitive reappraisal) compared to the control condition on the different dependent variables, a repeated measures ANOVA was performed for each dependent variable (DV) with three independent variables (IVs): experimental condition (emotion regulation versus control condition, within-subjects), group (experiential emotion regulation versus cognitive reappraisal, between-subjects), and time (Time 1 versus Time 2 versus Time 3, within-subjects). Results were Greenhouse–Geisser corrected where appropriate. Following up on the condition × group × time interaction, five specific comparisons were conducted to test our five a priori hypotheses. If the condition × group × time three-way interaction was not significant, an FDR correction was used to test these specific comparisons, assuming q=0.05.To test hypothesis 1 – whether experiential emotion regulation at Time 1 (EER1) results in a more negative emotional experience, higher skin conductance responses, heart rate, and corrugator activity, and lower zygomaticus activity, than the control condition (watch1) – a dependent samples t-test was conducted. To test Hypothesis 2 – whether cognitive reappraisal at Time 1 (CER1) whether the first instance of cognitive reappraisal shows the opposite pattern as experiential emotion regulation (Hypothesis 2) a dependent samples t-test was conducted, comparing the experimental condition to the control condition for the cognitive reappraisal group at Time 1 specifically. With respect to the impact of repeated regulation, we expected that repeated (from Time 1 to Time 3) experiential emotion regulation would decrease negative emotional experience, skin conductance responses, heart rate, and corrugator activity, and increase zygomaticus activity more than cognitive reappraisal (Hypothesis 3). This hypothesis was tested with a custom contrast (EER3 – EER1) - (watch3-watch1)) – ((CER3-CER1) - (watch3-watch1)) using JASP (https://jasp-stats.org). In contrast, we did not expect that such temporal trends would be evident for cognitive reappraisal (Hypothesis 4), which was tested with a custom contrast ((CER3 – CER1) - (watch3-watch1)) also with JASP. Additionally, significant three-way interaction effects were followed up by posthoc false discovery rate (FDR)-corrected (i.e., pFDR< 0.05) pairwise comparisons to explore changes in each DV from the first to the second and the third time of emotion regulation for experiential emotion regulation and cognitive reappraisal, both compared to the control condition. To test hypothesis 5 – whether repeated experiential emotion regulation relative to repeated control; compared to repeated cognitive reappraisal relative to repeated control, would result in lower negative emotional experience, skin conductance responses, heart rate, and corrugator activity, and higher zygomaticus activity at time 3– an independent samples t-test was conducted comparing the experimental conditions (EER3 versus CER3).Results Preliminary analyses Order effects for each group As the order of the emotion regulation and control blocks was counterbalanced within each experimental group, Welch’s t-test was run to check whether the order affected the behavioral and physiological variables within both the experiential emotion regulation and cognitive reappraisal group. Results showed that the order did not affect any of the dependent variables (all p values > 0.05). Individual differences check by the questionnaire Groups did not differ in experiential avoidance and psychological flexibility. Additionally, groups did not show a tendency to regulate emotions with reappraisal or suppression. There were also no significant group differences for emotional processing and emotional expression, difficulty describing feelings, difficulty identifying feelings and externally oriented thinking, and usage of cognitive coping strategies. All mean (SD), T, and p values can be found in the supplementary materials (Supplementary Table 2). Subjective emotional experience Single emotion regulation Consistent with Hypothesis 1, negative emotional experience at Time 1 of emotion regulation was higher for experiential emotion regulation, compared to the control condition, t (27) = 3.72, p < .001, Cohen’s d = .70 (see Table 1 and Figure 2). Consistent with Hypothesis 2, negative emotional experience at Time 1 was lower for cognitive reappraisal, compared to the control condition, t (29) = -3.66, p < .001, Cohen’s d = - .67 (see Table 1 and Figure 2). Repeated emotion regulation A 2 × 2 × 3 (experimental condition [emotion regulation, control condition] × group [experiential emotion regulation, cognitive reappraisal] × time [Time 1, Time 2, Time 3]) ANOVA was conducted for subjective emotional experience. The main effect of the experimental condition was not significant, nor was the interaction between time and group, nor the interaction between time and the experimental condition (ps > .05). The main effect of time was significant, F(1.68, 94.01) = 34.27, p < .001, η²p = .38, as well as the interaction between experimental condition and group, F (1, 56) = 31.18, p < .001, η²p = .35. The three-way condition x group x time interaction was also significant, F(1.79, 100.22) = 3.32, p = .045, η²p = .06. Following up the significant three-way interaction, specific comparisons were constructed to test our a priori hypotheses. Consistent with Hypothesis 3 (also see table 2), repeated (from Time 1 to Time 3) experiential emotion regulation, compared to repeated control, resulted in a steeper decrease in negative emotional experience, t(112) = 2.44, p = .02, 95% CI [-10.07, -1.04]. Also consistent with Hypothesis 4, repeated (from Time 1 to Time 3) cognitive reappraisal, compared to repeated control, did not result in a steeper relative decrease in negative emotional experience, add the statistics. In contrast to Hypothesis 5, at Time 3, after repeated experiential emotion regulation, compared to repeated cognitive reappraisal, did not result in lower negative emotional experience t(42) = 3.39, p = .99, Cohen’s d = .90. Further exploration of the three-way interaction showed that, despite the decrease in negative emotional experience from the first to the second time, it did not differ between experiential emotion regulation and the control condition, t(27) = .10, pFDR = .61, Cohen’s d = .02, the decrease in negative emotional experience from the second to the third time was stronger for experiential emotion regulation than for the control condition, t(27) = 3.71, pFDR < .05, Cohen’s d = .70 (see Table 2 and Figure 2). Moreover, the decrease in negative emotional experience from the first to the second time did not differ between cognitive reappraisal and the control condition, t(29) = -.93, pFDR = .61, Cohen’s d = - .17. Similarly, the decrease in negative emotional experience from the second to the third time, did not differ between cognitive reappraisal and the ‘watch’ condition, t(29) = .16, pFDR = .88, Cohen’s d = .03. Figure 2. Subjective emotional experience (mean ± standard deviation) for each experimental group. Abbreviations: E1 = first time of experiential emotion regulation; E2= second time of experiential emotion regulation; E3 = third time of experiential emotion regulation; W1 = first time of watch; W2 = second time of watch; W3 = third time of watch. R1 = first time of cognitive reappraisal; R2 = second time of cognitive reappraisal; R3 = third time of cognitive reappraisal. The error bars denote standard deviations (SD). Emotion-expressive activity Corrugator Supercilii EMG activity A 2 × 2 × 3 (experimental condition [emotion regulation, control condition] × group [EER, CER] × time [Time 1, Time 2, Time 3]) ANOVA was conducted for corrugator supercilii EMG activity. Only the main effect of time was significant, F (2, 98) = 39.34, p < .001, η²p = .45. Corrugator supercilii EMG activity decreased significantly across time. Neither the main effects of experimental condition or group, nor the interaction between experimental condition and group, nor the interaction between time and group, nor the interaction between time and experimental condition, nor the three-way experimental condition x group x time interaction was significant (ps > .05). Given the non-significant three-way interaction for corrugator EMG activity, we explored our specific a priori hypotheses using FDR correction. In contrast to Hypothesis 1, corrugator EMG activity at Time 1 was not significantly higher for experiential emotion regulation than the control condition, t(25) = - .79, pFDR = .78, Cohen’s d = -.16 (Figure 3A). Contrary to Hypothesis 2, corrugator EMG activity at Time 1 was not significantly lower for cognitive reappraisal than for the control condition, t (28) = -.64, pFDR = .27, Cohen’s d = -.12 (Figure 3A). In contrast to Hypothesis 3, repeated (from Time 1 to Time 3) experiential emotion regulation) relative to repeated control, did not result in a steeper decrease in corrugator EMG activity, t(98) = -1.11, pFDR = .30, 95%CI [-0.04, 0.14].In line with hypothesis 4, repeated (from Time 1 to Time 3) cognitive reappraisal relative to repeated control, did not result in a steeper decrease in corrugator EMG activity, t(98) = -1.11, pFDR = .30, 95%CI [-0.04, 0.14]. Finally, as opposed to Hypothesis 5, at Time 3, after three times of experiential emotion regulation, compared to three times of cognitive reappraisal, did not result in lower corrugator EMG activity, t(52) = .55, pFDR = .99, Cohen’s d = .15. Table 1. Mean (SD) of subjective rating, expressive and autonomic responses by group, time, and condition. Watch1 Watch2 Watch3 Exp1 Exp2 Exp3 Watch1 Watch2 Watch3 Reapp1 Reapp2 Reapp3 Emotion Experience Rating (100%) 55.03 (13.77) 52.19 (14.56) 48.12 (14.64) 63.49 (11.00) 60.48 (14.95) 52.83 (16.92) 56.32 (11.41) 52.26 (12.33) 48.67 (13.92) 47.40 (8.49) 44.29 (9.92) 40.48 (9.55) Corrugator (µV RMS) 11.77 (6.69) 9.59 (5.21) 8.02 (4.15) 11.35 (5.95) 10.35 (5.68) 8.18 (4.07) 10.52 (3.70) 9.95 (4.04) 7.18 (3.15) 10.58 (4.06) 9.42 (3.81) 7.43 (3.64) Zygomaticus (µV RMS) 4.10 (3.26) 3.85 (2.03) 3.90 (2.63) 3.54 (2.17) 4.23 (2.07) 3.86 (2.18) 4.06 (2.05) 4.27 (2.62) 4.19 (2.23) 4.77 (3.88) 4.86 (3.30) 5.15 (3.96) SCR (µSiemens) 0.36 (0.15) 0.42 (0.16) 0.37 (0.17) 0.36 (0.23) 0.37 (0.15) 0.35 (0.16) 0.32 (0.18) 0.32 (0.16) 0.30 (0.15) 0.30 (0.18) 0.29 (0.14) 0.32 (0.15) HR (bpm) 83.03 (16.55) 84.52 (17.28) 84.18 (8.15) 84.41 (16.78) 83.55 (18.40) 82.98 (16.81) 82.48 (14.93) 85.27 (17.95) 82.24 (12.51) 82.12 (14.85) 83.42 (15.24) 84.81 (15.66) Note Watch1: the first time of watch; Watch2: the second time of watch; Watch3: the third time of watch; Exp1: the first time of experiential emotion regulation; Exp2: the second time of experiential emotion regulation; Exp3: the third time of experiential emotion regulation; Reapp1: the first time of cognitive reappraisal; Reapp2: the second time of cognitive reappraisal; Reapp3: the third time of cognitive reappraisal. SCR = skin conductance response, HR= heart rate. RMS= root mean square; bpm= beats per minute. Zygomaticus major EMG activity A 2 × 2 × 3 (experimental condition [emotion regulation, control condition] × group [EER, CER] × time [Time 1, Time 2, Time 3]) ANOVA was conducted for zygomaticus major EMG activity. Neither the main effects of experimental condition, group, or time, nor the interaction between experimental condition and group, nor the interaction between time and group, nor the interaction between time and experimental condition, nor the three-way experimental condition x group x time interaction was significant ( p s > .05). Given that the three-way interaction was not significant for zygomaticus EMG activity, we explored our specific hypotheses using FDR correction. In contrast to Hypothesis 1, experiential emotion regulation did not result in lower zygomaticus EMG activity than the control condition at Time 1, t (25) = -1.55, pFDR = .13, Cohen’s d = -.31. In line with Hypothesis 2, cognitive reappraisal, relative to the control condition, showed higher zygomaticus EMG activity at Time 1, t (28) = 2.69, pFDR = .02, Cohen’s d = .52. As opposed to Hypothesis 3, experiential emotion regulation did not result in lower zygomaticus EMG activity relative to cognitive reappraisal at Time 1 , t (53) = -1.28, pFDR = .18, Cohen’s d = -.35 (Figure 3B). In contrast to Hypothesis 4, repeated (from Time 1 to Time 3) experiential emotion regulation relative to repeated control, did not result in a steeper relative increase in zygomaticus EMG activity than repeated (from Time 1 to Time 3) cognitive reappraisal, t (98) = -1.05, pFDR = .30, 95%CI [-.07, .21]. Contrary to Hypothesis 5, at Time 3, after three times of regulation, experiential emotion regulation, compared to cognitive reappraisal, did not result in higher zygomaticus EMG activity t (52) = -1.49, pFDR = .99, Cohen’s d = -.41. Table 2. Mean (SD) of the relative decrease of subjective rating, expressive and autonomic responses for all the experimental conditions. Experiential ER Watch Cognitive reappraisal Watch Emotional Experience Rating (100%) 10.66 (12.37) 6.91 (10.90) 6.92 (8.14) 7.65 (10.17) Emotion-expressive behavior Corrugator (µV RMS) 1.57 (4.20) 1.31 (5.00) 1.68 (3.30) 2.36 (3.79) Zygomaticus (µV RMS) 0.07 (3.28) -0.01 (1.33) -0.38 (4.33) -0.13 (1.64) Autonomic responses SCR (µSiemens) -0.01 (0.20) -0.03 (0.20) -0.02 (0.17) 0.02 (0.18) HR (bpm) 1.43 (5.73) -1.15 (7.18) -2.69 (7.43) 0.23 (5.24) Note SCR= skin conductance response, HR= heart rate. RMS= root mean square; bpm= beats per minute. Autonomic responses Skin conductance response A 2 × 2 × 3 (experimental condition [emotion regulation, control condition] × group [EER, CER] × time [Time 1, Time 2, Time 3]) ANOVA was conducted for skin conductance response. The main effect of the experimental condition was significant, F (1, 45) = 4.69, p = .04 , η² p = .09. Compared to the control condition (Mean = 0.34, SD = .17), emotion regulation (Mean = .31, SD = .17) resulted in a lower skin conductance response. The interaction between the experimental condition and group, the main effects of time or group, the interaction between time and group, the interaction between time and the experimental condition, and the three-way experimental condition x group x time interaction were all not significant ( p s > .05). Given the non-significant three-way interaction for corrugator EMG activity, we explored our specific a priori hypotheses using FDR correction. Given the three-way interaction was not significant for skin conductance response, we explored our specific hypotheses using FDR correction. In contrast to Hypothesis 1, skin conductance response at Time 1 was not significantly higher for experiential emotion regulation than the control condition, t(22) = .74, pFDR = .30, Cohen’s d = .15 (see Figure 3C). As opposed to Hypothesis 2, lower skin conductance response at Time 1 was not lower for cognitive reappraisal than in the control condition, t (27) = -.64, pFDR = .27, Cohen’s d = -.12 (see Figure 4C). Contrary to Hypothesis 3, experiential emotion regulation did not result in higher skin conductance response relative to cognitive reappraisal at Time 1, t(49) = .57, pFDR = .36, Cohen’s d = .16 (Figure 3C). In contrast to Hypothesis 4, repeated (from Time 1 to Time 3) experiential emotion regulation relative to repeated control, did not result in a steeper relative decrease in skin conductance response than repeated (from Time 1 to Time 3) cognitive reappraisal relative to repeated control, t(90) = 1.88, pFDR = .12, 95%CI [-.23, .01]. As opposed to Hypothesis 5, repeated experiential emotion regulation, compared to repeated cognitive reappraisal, did not result in lower skin conductance response after three times of regulation, t(50) = .96, pFDR = .99, Cohen’s d = .27 (see Figure 3C). Heart rate A 2 × 2 × 3 (experimental condition [emotion regulation, ‘watch’ condition] × group [EER, CER] × time [Time 1, Time 2, Time 3]) ANOVA was conducted for heart rate. None of the main effects of the experimental condition, time, or group, were significant. Similarly, the interaction between the experimental condition and group, the interaction between time and group, the interaction between time and the experimental condition, and the three-way experimental condition x group x time interaction were not significant ( p s > .05). Given the non-significant three-way interaction for heart rate, we explored our specific hypotheses using FDR correction. In contrast to Hypothesis 1, heart rate at Time 1 was not significantly lower for experiential emotion regulation than the control condition, t (25) = 1.42, pFDR = .13, Cohen’s d = .28 (Figure 3D). In contrast to Hypothesis 2, heart rate at Time 1 was not significantly lower for cognitive reappraisal than in the control condition, t (27) = -.66, pFDR = .27, Cohen’s d = -.12 (see Figure 3D). In contrast to Hypothesis 3, experiential emotion regulation did not result in higher heart rate relative to cognitive reappraisal at Time 1, t(53) = .34, pFDR = .37, Cohen’s d = .09 (Figure 3D). In contrast to Hypothesis 3, experiential emotion regulation did not result in higher heart rate relative to cognitive reappraisal at Time 1 , t (53) = .34, pFDR = .37, Cohen’s d = .09 (Figure 3D). In contrast to hypothesis 4, repeated (from Time 1 to Time 3) experiential emotion regulation relative to repeated control did not decrease heart rate more than repeated (from Time 1 to Time 3) cognitive reappraisal relative to repeated control, t (98) = 2.15, pFDR = .12 .In contrast to Hypothesis 5, experiential emotion regulation, compared to cognitive reappraisal, did not result in lower heart rate after three-time repeated regulation at Time 3, t(52) = -.55, pFDR = .99, Cohen’s d = -.15 (see Figure 3D). Figure 3. (A) The Corrugator Supercilii EMG activity (mean ± standard deviation) for each group. (B) The Zygomaticus Major EMG activity (mean ± standard deviation) for each group. (C) Skin Conductance Response (mean ± standard deviation) for each group. (D) The Heart Rate (mean ± standard deviation) for each group. Abbreviations: E1 = first time of experiential emotion regulation (ER); E2= second time of experiential emotion regulation; E3 = third time of experiential emotion regulation; W1 = first time of watch; W2 = second time of watch; W3 = third time of watch. R1 = first time of cognitive reappraisal; R2 = second time of cognitive reappraisal; R3 = third time of cognitive reappraisal. The error bars denote standard deviations (SD).Discussion The present study aimed to gain more insight into the adaptiveness of experiential emotion regulation in comparison with cognitive reappraisal by validating both the impact of single- versus repeated experiential emotion regulation and cognitive reappraisal on the subjective emotional experience and its associated physiological responses. Relative to the control condition, the first instance of experiential emotion regulation resulted in an increased subjective negative emotional experience, while physiological expressive- and autonomic activity did not follow this increase but dissociated from this initial intensification of the subjective negative emotional experience. Relative to the control condition, the first instance of cognitive reappraisal decreased subjective negative emotional experience immediately and increased positive facial expressivity. Also, here, negative facial expressivity and the physiological autonomic activity did not follow this initial reduction, but dissociated from the emotional experience, resulting in more positive facial expressivity and autonomic activity. Both emotion regulation strategies resulted in a lower skin conductance response than the control ‘watch’ condition. Interestingly, repeated experiential emotion regulation, relative to the repeated control condition, led to a steeper decrease in negative emotional experience while repeated cognitive reappraisal relative to the repeated control condition did not follow such a temporal trend. Experiential emotion regulation versus cognitive reappraisal The effects of single versus repeated emotion regulation on subjective emotional experience In line with our theoretical assumptions and the first hypothesis, a first instance of experiential emotion regulation, compared to a single instance of the control condition, intensified negative subjective emotional experience. In experiential awareness, attention is brought to the bodily felt affective experience to notice how affect is felt within the body, intensifying affect in awareness [10]. This method of unreflectively focusing on the here-and-now engages affective information processing at an early stage [65], which further facilitates and enhances the depth of primary affective information processing [9–12]. In congruence with previous research findings, [19, 42], and our second hypotheses, a single instance of cognitive reappraisal resulted in an immediate decrease of the negative emotional experience, compared to a single instance of control condition. Furthermore, in line with the third and fourth hypothesis, the comparison of repeated experiential emotion regulation, relative to repeated control resulted in a steeper decrease of negative emotional experience while repeated cognitive reappraisal relative to repeated control did not follow such a temporal trend (Hypothesis 4). Although these findings demonstrate that experiential emotion regulation initially enhanced negative emotional experience, its repeated deployment significantly reduced negative emotional experience. These results imply that experiential emotion regulation and cognitive reappraisal may exert differential effects: cognitive reappraisal regulates emotions immediately and continues to be effective up to a third regulation, whereas experiential emotion regulation is not immediately effective but seems to be progressively effective with repeated processing. Repeated emotion regulation may deepen our processing and the frequency of exposure while enhancing the process of ‘experiencing as accepting, while accepting is regulating´[66, 67]. As Eugene Gendlin (1973) emphasized, psychotherapy’s success depends on the way clients intuitively focus on the subtle and vague internal bodily felt affective experiences [33]. Experiential emotion regulation requires attending to this elusive bodily felt affective experience that cannot immediately be put into words. Still, people can distinctly feel it has a connection to some issue or event in their lives [11, 68]. As in mindfulness, accessing this bodily felt feeling involves a friendly, welcoming, and relieving mindset toward the own inner experience [69–71]. Research has already indicated that meditators who practice putting their attention to internal bodily sensations have greater respiratory interoceptive accuracy than non-meditators indicating increased interoceptive awareness [72]. To attend, acknowledge and realize one’s bodily felt affect, resulting in experiential awareness, maximizes one’s awareness of the interoceptive felt experience, which may accelerate the extinction process of the negative experience at the same time. As experiential emotion regulation did not decrease negative emotion more than cognitive reappraisal, but resulted in a steeper decrease with repeated processing, it is plausible that experiential emotion regulation needs more than three times of regulation to become potentially more effective in the long run. Future studies should examine how long the period of experiential emotion regulation should be, or how many times of experiential emotion regulation are needed to ultimately result in a lower subjective negative emotional experience in the longer run. In comparison, despite its immediate reduction in negative experience, repeated cognitive reappraisal did not result in more or less negative emotion relative to experiential emotion regulation. On the one hand, this is consistent with a recent study that demonstrated that cognitive reappraisal via reinterpretation initially reduced anger, whereas a second instance of cognitive reappraisal did not result in a further reduction of the anger [41]. Only cognitive reappraisal by perspective-taking produced long-lasting effects [5,73]. However, repeated cognitive reappraisal via reinterpretation resulted in a long-term effect with stronger activation in the dorsal- and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex [39]. Also, a meta-analysis on emotion regulation confirmed that cognitively reappraising emotional stimuli by reinterpretation is less effective than reappraisal by perspective-taking [42], which could explain the inconsistency among studies. The effects of single versus repeated emotion regulation on facial expressivity In contrast to the first hypothesis, a single instance of experiential emotion regulation compared to a single instance of the control condition did not result in higher corrugator expressive activity and lower major expressive activity. Also, the first instance of cognitive reappraisal compared to the control condition did not decrease corrugator expressive activity but increased major expressive activity. This partially confirms the second hypothesis that the first instance of cognitive reappraisal, compared to the first instance of the control condition, decreased negative emotion and associated physiological responses more. Neither repeated experiential emotion regulation nor repeated cognitive reappraisal resulted in a larger decrease of corrugator activity nor a larger increase of zygomaticus activity relative to repeated control. On the one hand, researchers using facial EMG measurement found that downregulation of reappraisal led to reduced corrugator responses [22]. However, the current study did not replicate that observation. On the other hand, established research and theories associate zygomaticus major activity with positive affect and mood [21, 24, 74–77]. Along with the decrease in negative emotional experience, these findings support the link between zygomaticus major activity and a positive emotional state and, in turn, emotional recovery and well-being. In a study comparing different emotion regulation strategies – such as reinterpretation, distraction, detachment, and expressive suppression – cognitive reappraisal via reinterpretation, failed to downregulate the amygdala [78]. Another study showed that emotion regulation via reinterpretation increased positive feelings and activated the amygdala instead of decreasing its activation [79]. Research by Wager and associates (2008) found that cognitive reappraisal was also associated with reduced negative emotional experience [80]. Furthermore, this reduction involved two pathways: through the nucleus accumbens and ventral striatum, which may generate positive appraisals, or through the amygdala, which may generate- or enhance negative appraisals. In line with these results, the increased zygomaticus major activity found in the current study could also reflect the generation of more positive reappraisals. The effects of single versus repeated emotion regulation on autonomous activity In contrast to the first hypothesis, the first instance of experiential emotion regulation compared to the control condition did not result in higher skin conductance response and heart rate. Likewise, in contrast to the second hypothesis, the first instance of cognitive reappraisal, compared to the first instance of the control condition, did not result in lower skin conductance response and heart rate. Neither repeated experiential emotion regulation nor repeated cognitive reappraisal resulted in a larger decrease of skin conductance and heart rate relative to repeated control. In line with this result, a previous study by Gross (1998) on the adaptiveness of cognitive reappraisal found that cognitive reappraisal did not show lower sympathetic activation or heart rate compared to the control condition [16]. Therefore, one possible explanation was that reappraisal did not significantly affect the physiological component of an emotional response. This explanation was further supported by a more recent study comparing the effects of cognitive reappraisal and acceptance [83]. Again, they found that cognitive reappraisal did not influence physiological reactivity, while acceptance decreased the skin conductance level. The authors thus concluded that, whereas cognitive reappraisal was more effective for changing subjective experiences in the short term, acceptance might be easier to deploy and have a greater effect on changing one’s physiological response [83]. In line with these findings, the present study found that neither experiential emotion regulation nor cognitive reappraisal, significantly affected autonomous activity. Limitations and future directions Despite the importance of the present study validating repeated experiential emotion regulation versus cognitive reappraisal in relatively culturally uniform undergraduate women, future studies should also seek to replicate these findings in males, in larger mixed-cultural, social and gender populations, and also in other age groups, to explore external validity. A limitation is also that we only focused on two complementary forms of strategies despite the range of emotion regulation strategies an individual uses. Another limitation of the study is that the validation of emotion regulation has been done, with the use of static stimuli by picture stimuli (e.g., IAPS images). Future research on this matter should seek to test more strategies, while utilizing stimuli with greater ecological validity, such as by dynamic stimuli. In line with this artificial context, the research has been done in a highly controlled lab context. More ecological daily life situations such as by asking participants to practice public speaking or other commonplace activities that tend to incite negative affective experiences should enhance validity. Another limitation of this study is that the power of the sample size was calculated with G*Power, which is less suited for a more complex mixed design as used in the current study [84]. Moreover, due to missing channel data in each experimental session – which is often the case in physiological research – some data points were excluded. Of note, in the control ‘watch’ condition of the current study, participants were asked to view the negative pictures attentively by focusing on the colors in the image, allowing them to experience or feel any emotional responses without trying to manipulate them. The advantage of this manipulation is that we know exactly what participants are doing during the control ‘watch’ condition, compared to instructions given in some other studies (e.g., [5, 85, 86] such as “look at and respond naturally to the image that followed.” However, the disadvantage of using this instruction for the control condition is that participants divert their attention toward the colors in the pictures, which may induce the emotional regulatory impact of distraction [6, 86, 87]. Although the current study provided extensive emotion regulation training beforehand to ensure participants successfully deployed the emotion regulation strategies and the groups were controlled for dispositional emotion regulation, it is still possible that some dispositional- and automatic emotion regulation played a role. As this is one of the first studies on the impact of repeated experiential emotion regulation, more research is needed to confirm and generalize our findings. Conclusion The present study involves a first exploratory step in the investigation of the impact of single versus repeated experiential emotion regulation and cognitive reappraisal on the subjective negative emotional experience and its associated physiological responses. As summarized from the subjective behavioral findings, cognitive reappraisal regulates emotions immediately, while experiential emotion regulation, after an initial increase in negative emotional experience, showed a steeper decrease of negative emotion with repeated processing. Although the current findings are promising, these results are still preliminary, needing further examination, replication, and validation. Further research is needed to validate whether this enhanced decrease reflects increased, in-depth, affective processing, suggesting that longer or more frequent regulation is necessary. Yet, in line with the core concept of the top-down explicit emotion regulation strategy cognitive reappraisal by ‘feeling better by changing your thinking,’ cognitive reappraisal worked instantly by decreasing negative emotional experience while increasing positive emotional expressivity. To conclude, the current study contributes to our understanding of the central working mechanisms of experiential, client-centered-, and emotion-focused psychotherapy and the underlying mechanisms of cognitive behavioral therapy. Conflicts of Interests The authors report no biomedical financial interests or potential conflicts of interest. Funding statement. This research paper was supported by the SRP047: The affective brain, Spearhead research project: Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium. Acknowledgments The authors are thankful for the valuable suggestions and feedback about the experimental design and physiological data analysis in this study from Ilse Van Diest (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven). References 1. Doré, B.P.; Silvers, J.A.; Ochsner, K.N. Toward a Personalized Science of Emotion Regulation. Soc. Personal. Psychol. Compass 2016, 10, 171–187, doi:10.1111/spc3.12240.2. 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Authors Affiliations Yulin Wang Vrije Universiteit Brussel Faculteit Psychologie en Educatiewetenschappen View all articles by this author Elke Vlemincx Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam Afdeling Gezondheidswetenschappen View all articles by this author Luis Carlo Bulnes Vrije Universiteit Brussel Faculteit Psychologie en Educatiewetenschappen View all articles by this author Debo Dong University of Electronic Science and Technology of China School of Electronic Science and Engineering View all articles by this author Johan De Mey Vrije Universiteit Brussel - Brussels Health Campus View all articles by this author Daniele Marinazzo Universiteit Gent Vakgroep Data-analyse View all articles by this author James Gross Stanford University Department of Psychology View all articles by this author Marie Vandekerckhove 0000-0001-7955-2235 [email protected] Vrije Universiteit Brussel Faculteit Psychologie en Educatiewetenschappen View all articles by this author Metrics & Citations Metrics Article Usage 458 views 292 downloads .FvxKWukQNSOunydq8rnd { width: 100px; } Citations Download citation Yulin Wang, Elke Vlemincx, Luis Carlo Bulnes, et al. 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