Subjective emotional arousal: an explorative study on the role of gender, age, intensity, emotion regulation difficultie
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Subjective emotional arousal: an explorative study on the role of gender, age, intensity, emotion regulation difficulties, depression and anxiety symptoms, and meta‑emotion Matthias Deckert1 · Michaela Schmoeger1 · Eduard Auff1 · Ulrike Willinger1 Received: 30 July 2018 / Accepted: 2 May 2019 © The Author(s) 2019
Abstract Subjective emotional arousal in typically developing adults was investigated in an explorative study. 177 participants (20– 70 years) rated facial expressions and words for self-experienced arousal and perceived intensity, and completed the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation scale and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression scale (HADS-D). Exclusion criteria were psychiatric or neurological diseases, or clinically relevant scores in the HADS-D. Arousal regarding faces and words was significantly predicted by emotional clarity. Separate analyses showed following significant results: arousal regarding faces and arousal regarding words constantly predicted each other; negative faces were predicted by age and intensity; neutral faces by gender and impulse control; positive faces by gender and intensity; negative words by emotional clarity; and neutral words by gender. Males showed higher arousal scores than females regarding neutral faces and neutral words; for the other arousal scores, no explicit group differences were shown. Cluster analysis yielded three distinguished emotional characteristics groups: “emotional difficulties disposition group” (mainly females; highest emotion regulation difficulties, depression and anxiety scores; by trend highest arousal), “low emotional awareness group” (exclusively males; lowest awareness regarding currently experienced emotions; by trend intermediate arousal), and a “low emotional difficulties group” (exclusively females; lowest values throughout). No age effect was shown. Results suggest that arousal elicited by facial expressions and words are specialized parts of a greater emotional processing system and that typically developing adults show some kind of stable, modality-unspecific dispositional baseline of emotional arousal. Emotional awareness and clarity, and impulse control probably are trait aspects of emotion regulation that influence emotional arousal in typically developing adults and can be regarded as aspects of meta-emotion. Different emotional personality styles were shown between as well as within gender groups.
Introduction The role of emotional arousal in emotion processing
* Matthias Deckert [email protected] Michaela Schmoeger [email protected] Eduard Auff [email protected] Ulrike Willinger [email protected] 1
Department of Neurology, Medical University of Vienna, Waehringer Guertel 18‑20, 1090 Vienna, Austria
Emotional responses can be defined as reactions to evocative stimuli, in terms of identifying the emotional significance of a stimulus or situation, producing an affective state, and regulating the affective state (Phillips, Drevets, Rauch, & Lane, 20
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