Does Self-Reassurance Reduce Neural and Self-Report Reactivity to Negative Life Events?

• Main Authors: Jeffrey J. Kim, James R. Doty, Ross Cunnington, James N. Kirby
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Frontiers Media S.A. 2021-09-01
• Series: Frontiers in Psychology
• Subjects: compassion; self-criticism; fMRI; reassurance; emotion
• Online Access: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.658118/full

Whilst research has shown how self-criticism may increase both neural and self-report markers of negative emotion, less well-known is how self-reassurance—a compassionately-motivated cognitive self-relating style—may regulate negative emotion. Using fMRI, we invited participants to engage in self-criticism and self-reassurance toward written descriptions of negative life events (mistakes, setbacks, failures). Our results identify that neural markers of negative emotion and self-report markers of trial intensity during fMRI are down-regulated under conditions of self-reassurance, relative to self-criticism. Future work to control for autobiographical memory during this fMRI task is needed, as are controls for how well participants can engage in both thinking styles, to explore how memory/task engagement can contribute to self-reassurance and self-criticism. Engagement in self-reassurance can reduce the “sting” of negative life-events, both neural and self-report, which holds important implications for therapy.