In the 1960′s Stanford University did a study on children and their ability to make choices specifically in regards to instant gratification.  It is known as the Marshmallow Experiment.

According to RedOrbit.com  Stanford wanted to know how humans handled delayed gratification but that also raised the question of how other species close to humans would handle the same circumstances.

“Psychologists and economists have found that emotions play a critical role in shaping how humans make complex decisions, such as decisions about saving or investing money. But it was not known if these processes are shared with other animals when they make decisions about their important resources—such as food,” said Alexandra Rosati, from Yale University stated.

In a modified version of Stanford’s “Marshmallow Experiment”, Rosati and Brian Hare from Duke University have studied the same effects on chimpanzees and Bonobo monkeys in Africa, observing the emotional responses of these animals to understand how they make their decisions.

In their experiment the animals were given a choice to eat one piece of food now or three pieces of food later.  Both bonobos and chimps displayed some kind of emotional response after making their choice, either pouting because they had to wait for their food or lamenting their choice of instant gratification.

In another experiment, Hare and Rosati let the animals choose a better tasting treat, but they may have been given a less than favorable treat if their gamble did not pay off. In this experiment, some of the animals even tried to change their minds in the middle of the test once they were given the unsavory treat.

Further research needs to be conducted to understand if these emotional responses can affect the animal’s choices, but Rosati and Hare did say their experiment proved that apes do express emotion when they’re faced with choices. This also adds to the long and ongoing list of similarities between humans and primates.

 What are your thoughts on this experiment? What does it say about the nature of emotion?

 The British Psychological Society reports on how people regulate their emotions.

They report that according to new research published in the journal Emotion, a person’s ability to regulate or not regulate their emotions has a big impact on the level of anxiety they feel.

This new research purports that individuals who adopt an emotional regulation strategy called reappraisal often suffer from less general and social anxiety than those who fail to express their feelings openly.

Nicole Llewellyn, a graduate student from the University of Illinois, explained the reappraisal strategy as one that sees people thinking about things in a more positive light, adding: “You sort of re-frame and reappraise what’s happened and think what are the positives about this?“  Individuals who follow this approach will often consider how an issue can be a seen as a stimulating challenge as opposed to a problem.

FarsNews.com reports on a related study, conducted by British researchers, that shows that different brain areas are activated when we choose to suppress an emotion compared to when we are instructed to inhibit an emotion.

Dr. Simone Kuhn of Ghent University and colleagues scanned the brains of healthy participants and found that key brain systems were activated when choosing to suppress an emotion. They had previously linked this brain area to deciding to inhibit movement.

“This result shows that emotional self-control involves a quite different brain system from simply being told how to respond emotionally,” Kuhn, the lead author, reported.

He went on to note, “We should distinguish between voluntary and instructed control of emotions, in the same way as we can distinguish between making up our own mind about what do, versus following instructions.”

This study published in Brain Structure and Function had fifteen healthy women view unpleasant or frightening pictures. The participants were given a choice to feel the emotion elicited by the image, or alternatively to inhibit the emotion, by distancing themselves through an act of self-control.

The researchers further delineated, “Most studies of emotion processing in the brain simply assume that people passively receive emotional stimuli, and automatically feel the corresponding emotion. In contrast, the area we have identified may contribute to some individuals’ ability to rise above particular emotional situations.”

 What are Your Thoughts on this new Emotion Regulation Information?