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Emotion Reactivity and Regulation in Adolescent Girls Following an Interpersonal Rejection

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Emotion Reactivity and Regulation in Adolescent Girls Following an Interpersonal Rejection Emotion Reactivity and Regulation in Adolescent Girls Following an Interpersonal Rejection Adam Bryant Miller, Mitchell J. Prinstein, Emily Munier, Laura S. Machlin, and Margaret A. Sheridan Abstract ■ Failures in emotion regulation, especially as a result of inter- emotion reactivity and regulation before and after this rejection. personal stress, are implicated as transdiagnostic risk factors for Adolescent girls evidence greater reactivity via higher self- psychopathology. This study examines the effects of an experi- reported emotional intensity and greater amygdala activation mentally timed targeted interpersonal rejection on emotion reac- to negative stimuli immediately after (compared with before) tivity and regulation in typically developing adolescent girls. the rejection. Self-reported emotional intensity differences be- Girls (n = 33, ages 9–16 years, M = 12.47, SD = 2.20) under- fore and after rejection were not observed during regulation went fMRI involving a widely used emotion regulation task. The trials. However, on regulation trials, girls exhibited increased emotion task involves looking at negative stimuli and using cog- prefrontal activation in areas supporting emotion regulation nitive reappraisal strategies to decrease reactions to negative after compared with before the rejection. This study provides stimuli. Participants also engaged in a social evaluation task, evidence that a targeted rejection increases self-report and which leads participants to believe a preselected peer was neural markers of emotion reactivity and that girls increase watching and evaluating the participant. We subsequently told prefrontal activation to regulate emotions after a targeted participants they were rejected by this peer and examined rejection. ■ INTRODUCTION but not whether a targeted rejection affects subsequent Difficulties with emotion regulation are a transdiagnostic emotion regulation and associated neural recruitment in risk mechanism for psychopathology (Aldao, Gee, Reyes, areas underlying emotion reactivity to negative stimuli & Seager, 2016; Eisenberg et al., 2001; Gross & Muñoz, and emotion regulation via cognitive reappraisal. This ap- 1995), and the ability to regulate emotional responses proach, which we pursue here, is critical for understand- to interpersonal stressors is a fundamental skill that sup- ing the impact of targeted interpersonal rejection on ports positive mental health and well-being (Dahl, 2001). psychological health. For adolescents, it is not necessarily Peer relationships are central to adolescent socioemotional the immediate impact of targeted interpersonal rejection development, and interpersonal stress in peer relation- but the subsequent impact of dysregulation associated ships is expected but contributes risk for maladjustment with rejection which drives risk for psychopathology (Prinstein & Giletta, 2016). Lack of emotion regulation dur- (McLaughlin, Hatzenbuehler, & Hilt, 2009). Importantly, ing interpersonal interactions predicts peer rejection and participants were unaware that the social evaluation and subsequent psychopathology in adolescents (Laceulle, the emotion regulation tasks, described below, were Veenstra, Vollebergh, & Ormel, 2017). During the adoles- linked. We examined whether, after a targeted inter- cent transition, girls, compared with boys, experience more personal rejection, girls (1) became more reactive to internalizing reactions to interpersonal stress (Rose & negative stimuli and (2) evidenced altered emotion reg- Rudolph, 2006), especially targeted interpersonal rejection ulationinanunrelatedtask. (i.e., overt social rejection; Slavich & Irwin, 2014; Slavich, fMRI studies with adolescent samples consistently im- Tartter, Brennan, & Hammen, 2014). Thus, adolescent plicate the amygdala as a marker of emotional reactivity girls must skillfully apply emotion regulation following to negative stimuli (Silvers et al., 2015, 2017a), with female interpersonal stress. adolescents showing stronger reactivity than male ado- Previous research has investigated the neural corre- lescents (Stevens & Hamann, 2012). Cognitive reappraisal lates of emotion reactivity and regulation (Silvers, Shu, represents a form of emotion regulation that decreases Hubbard, Weber, & Ochsner, 2015; Buhle et al., 2014), negative emotions (Gross, 1998) and reduces biological reactivity to negative stimuli (Buhle et al., 2014; Ochsner et al., 2004; Gross, 1998). Cognitive reappraisal involves University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill reinterpreting the content of an evocative stimulus to © 2018 Massachusetts Institute of Technology Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 31:2, pp. 249–261 doi:10.1162/jocn_a_01351 reduce emotional intensity. The neural substrates of cog- little effect on neural recruitment during either reactivity nitive reappraisal are well characterized in both typical or regulation trials. As we review above, adolescent girls (Buhle et al., 2014; McRae et al., 2012; Silvers et al., have stronger emotion dysregulation reactions to inter- 2012) and atypical samples (Picó-Pérez, Radua, Steward, personal rejection. Thus, in the current study, we expect Menchón, & Soriano-Mas, 2017; McLaughlin, Peverill, different effects—both because the effects of a targeted re- Gold, Alves, & Sheridan, 2015). In brief, meta-analytic ev- jection may be stronger than general interpersonal stress idence suggests that cognitive reappraisal reliably activates and because we assess these processes in adolescents. cognitive control regions, including the dorsomedial PFC, Given previous work documenting increased amygdala dorsolateral PFC, ventrolateral PFC (vlPFC), and posterior activation in the context of negative emotion reactivity parietal lobe in the service of modulating subcortical acti- (Silvers et al., 2017a; Buhle et al., 2014), we hypothesized vation to negative stimuli (Buhle et al., 2014). The vlPFC in that girls would exhibit a temporary increase in amygdala particular plays an important role in cognitive reappraisal activation when passively viewing negative stimuli after a due to its facilitation of response selection and inhibition targeted rejection. Based on previous work demonstrat- (Braunstein, Gross, & Ochsner, 2017; Buhle et al., 2014; ing that typically developing children and adolescents are Wager, Davidson, Hughes, Lindquist, & Ochsner, 2008). able to effectively use cognitive reappraisal techniques to However, we have no information about how a targeted down-regulate emotion reactivity (Buhle et al., 2014), rejection affects adolescents’ ability to engage cognitive we hypothesized that these typically developing girls reappraisal to downregulate emotional reactivity. would effectively regulate their emotional responses to Research from the peer literature distinguishes tar- negative stimuli after targeted rejection. However, as in geted interpersonal rejections from social exclusion, Shermohammed and colleagues (2017), we expected suggesting that targeted rejections may have more this regulation to be accompanied by a temporary in- immediate effects on adolescents’ subsequent ability to crease in recruitment in frontal control regions implicated regulate emotions (Prinstein & Giletta, 2016). Previous in cognitive reappraisal during these attempts. Specif- research has investigated neural correlates of social ex- ically, we expected the vlPFC to be recruited to a greater clusion (Fowler, Miernicki, Rudolph, & Telzer, 2017; extent immediately after targeted rejection. The vlPFC is van der Meulen et al., 2017; Chester & DeWall, 2014; commonly observed during cognitive reappraisal, and Bolling et al., 2011; Masten et al., 2011; Sebastian et al., activation of the vlPFC and vlPFC/amygdala functional 2011; Somerville, Heatherton, & Kelley, 2006; Eisenberger, connectivity is associated with the degree of reduction in Lieberman, & Williams, 2003) and social evaluation self-reported emotion after reappraisal (Braunstein et al., (Somerville et al., 2013). Many of these studies use the 2017; Silvers et al., 2017a, 2017b; Buhle et al., 2014). Cyberball task (van der Meulen et al., 2017; Fowler et al., 2017; Chester & DeWall, 2014; Bolling et al., 2011; Sebastian et al., 2011; Eisenberger et al., 2003), chatroom tasks, or METHODS similar (Silk et al., 2013; Guyer et al., 2008) to elicit feelings Participants of social exclusion. Somerville and colleagues (2013) Participants included 33 girls (ages 9–16 years, M = developed a task where adolescents are lead to believe 12.47, SD = 2.20, 81% 9–14 years) who completed a base- that a potential peer is watching them to elicit feelings line assessment and participated in the scanning proce- of social evaluation. Broadly, these tasks have been shown dures described below. Participants identified as black to activate the vlPFC (Sebastian et al., 2011; Guyer et al., (n = 14, 42.4%), Asian (n =1,3%),white(n =15, 2008), the medial PFC (mPFC) (Somerville et al., 2013), 45.5%), and mixed race (n = 2, 6.1%). One participant and the bilateral amygdala (Silk et al., 2013; Guyer et al., preferred not to answer. Three individuals (9.7%) identi- 2008). Although these tasks elicit a temporary negative or fied as Hispanic or Latinx. Participants were recruited heightened emotional state, there is little information from a variety of sources, including Internet ads, flyers, about how this temporary emotional state affects near term listserv e-mails, and medical chart reviews. Exclusion cri- emotions and related neural activation to negative stimuli teria
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