Despite the prominence of emotional dysfunction
in psychopathology, relatively few experiments have explicitly
studied emotion regulation in adults. The present study
examined one type of emotion regulation: voluntary regulation
of short-term emotional responses to unpleasant visual
stimuli. In a sample of 48 college students, both eyeblink
startle magnitude and corrugator activity were sensitive
to experimental manipulation. Instructions to suppress
negative emotion led to both smaller startle eyeblinks
and decreased corrugator activity. Instructions to enhance
negative emotion led to larger startle eyeblinks and increased
corrugator activity. Several advantages of this experimental
manipulation are discussed, including the use of both a
suppress and an enhance emotion condition, independent
measurement of initial emotion elicitation and subsequent
regulation of that emotion, the use of a completely within-subjects
design, and the use of naturalistic emotion regulation
strategies.