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Emotion Regulation Training to Prevent Postpartum Depression

New research presented at the 37th European College of Neuropsychopharmacology studied the activity in the brain’s amygdala during pregnancy.

The amygdala is part of the temporal lobe and part of a larger network in the brain called the limbic system.

When it comes to survival, the amygdala and limbic system are extremely important. These are parts of the brain that automatically detect danger and play a role in behavior, emotional control and learning.

The researchers found that pregnant women with higher amygdala activity struggled more with emotional regulation and reported more depression symptoms postpartum.

This discovery could lead to early identification and targeted emotion regulation training for at-risk mothers. While preliminary, the findings offer potential for new strategies to prevent postpartum depression.

1 in 7 Women Develop Postpartum Depression

During pregnancy and the postpartum period, rising hormone levels create a “psychoneuroendocrinological window of vulnerability” for mental health.

80% of women develop often transitory “baby blues,” and about one in seven develop more serious postpartum depression.

According to the Mayo Clinic, postpartum depression symptoms may include:

  • Depressed mood or severe mood swings
  • Difficulty bonding with your baby
  • Less interest and pleasure in activities you used to enjoy
  • Intense irritability and anger
  • Feelings of worthlessness, shame, guilt or inadequacy
  • Reduced ability to think clearly, concentrate or make decisions
  • Severe anxiety and panic attacks
  • Thoughts of harming yourself or your baby
  • Recurring thoughts of death or suicide

Symptoms usually develop within the first few weeks after giving birth. But they may begin earlier – during pregnancy – or later – up to a year after birth.

Untreated, postpartum depression may last for many months or longer.

Pregnancy Study

The research presented included 47 women — 15 pregnant women and 32 non-pregnant controls.

To examine brain activity, participants were asked to view negative emotional images while undergoing functional MRI. They were then asked to use cognitive reappraisal to regulate their emotional response to the images.

The findings suggested that both pregnant and non pregnant women were equally successful at emotional regulation, but this process involved different brain activity in pregnant vs their non pregnant counterpart.

All women had increased left middle frontal gyrus activity when regulating their emotions, but there was a difference in the amygdala between the pregnancy group and controls.

These results suggest that pregnant women may have to exert more neural effort in emotional regulation.

In addition, pregnant women with higher amygdala activity were less able to regulate their emotions successfully compared to those with less amygdala activity. Higher amygdala activity was also associated with higher depression scores.

Although the researchers stated they need to be cautious when interpreting their results because of the small sample size, they emphasized if the findings are confirmed by larger studies, pregnant women could be assessed “in the waiting room” using existing questionnaires that evaluate emotional regulation.

If a woman has difficulties with emotion regulation, there are adaptive strategies, like cognitive reappraisal that a counseling psychotherapist, group sessions or online courses could help with.

Research like this is crucial for gaining insight into one of the most intense physiological processes a human can undergo: Pregnancy. It’s remarkable how much remains unknown.

Recently, the FDA approved the first treatment for postpartum depression. However, experts emphasize that research like this is crucial for gaining insight into one of the most intense physiological processes a human can undergo: Pregnancy.

It’s remarkable how much remains unknown.

The post Emotion Regulation Training to Prevent Postpartum Depression first appeared on Humintell.

To Be A Better Negotiator, Show More Facial Expressions

Listen to Dr. Matsumoto on Negotiate Anything Podcast

You may think that in a tough negotiation you need a good poker face, but recent research suggests that being pleasant and facially expressive could actually yield you better results.

Researchers out of Nottingham University in the UK collected data from over 1500 conversations while paying close attention to movements in the face like smiles, eyebrow raises, and nose wrinkles.

Their paper was published in Nature and is entitled “Being facially expressive is socially advantageous”.

They found that people who displayed more facial expressions were seen as more likable and socially successful.

Lead researcher Dr. Bridget Waller said this could explain why humans have more complex facial expressions than any other species.

Negotiation Study Methodology

In Study 1, the researchers recorded semi-structured video calls with 52 participants interacting with a confederate across various everyday contexts.

The researchers showed recorded clips of conversations to more than 170 people and asked them to rate how “readable” (in terms of emotions and expressions) and likable the subjects were in the videos.

In Study 2, they examined video calls of 1315 participants engaging in unscripted Zoom chats.

Facial expressivity indices were extracted using automated Facial Action Coding Scheme (FACS) analysis and measures of personality and partner impressions were obtained by self-report.

Negotiation Study Results

interview-office-meeting-greeting-hand-shakeIn Study 1, more facially expressive participants were more well-liked, agreeable, and successful at negotiating (if also more agreeable).

Participants who were more facially competent, readable, and perceived as readable were also more well-liked.

In Study 2, they replicated the findings that facial expressivity was associated with agreeableness and liking by their social partner, and additionally found it to be associated with extraversion and neuroticism.

These characteristics are part of the five most significant personality dimensions (the Big Five) identified by psychologists, which enable them to characterize personality differences between individuals in a comprehensive way:

  • Openness: willingness to adopt new ideas, experiences and values
  • Conscientiousness: dependability, punctuality, ambitiousness and discipline
  • Extraversion: sociability, assertiveness, adventurousness, dynamism and friendliness
  • Agreeableness: willingness to trust others, good natured, outgoing, obliging, helpful
  • Neuroticism (Emotional stability): self-confidence, equanimity, positivity, self-control

According to the study’s abstract, “these findings suggest that facial behavior is a stable individual difference that proffers social advantages, pointing towards an affiliative, adaptive function”.

Study Implications

This is the first large-scale study to examine facial expression in real-world interactions and researchers say it suggests that more expressive people are more successful at attracting social partners and in building relationships.

The work is part of a project known as Facediff (Individual differences in facial expressivity: Social function, facial anatomy and evolutionary origin), which is funded by the European Research Council.

Detecting Deception in Negotiation

Detecting Deception in Negotiation

Negotiations Ninja featured Humintell’s own Dr. David Matsumoto on their podcast to discuss detecting deception in negotiation!

During the episode Dr. Matsumoto shares his insights on how to read facial expressions, emotions, and intent. For those in negotiation, it’s sometimes difficult to understand what a person is actually feeling or thinking when they’re engaging face-to-face.

Dr. Matsumoto shares the research on less obvious facial expressions a procurement professional may encounter along the way. He’s sharing research into micro-expressions including what they are, what they reveal about the person, and how they communicate with the brain.

This is a fascinating conversation about everything from discipline in judo, to the way our approximately 23 facial muscles work, to his number one tip for professionals – active observation.

The post To Be A Better Negotiator, Show More Facial Expressions first appeared on Humintell.

The Link Between Childhood Trauma and Emotion Recognition

A recent study published in Scientific Reports studied the association between childhood trauma and emotion recognition.

Their results showed that childhood trauma alone was significantly associated with emotion recognition accuracy when exploring stimuli intensity, modality, and emotion.

Furthermore, when researchers controlled for psychopathy and alexithymia, childhood trauma was significant only when exploring the emotion portrayed.

The Importance of Emotion Recognition

IMPROVE YOUR EMOTION RECOGNITION ABILITY

Emotion recognition refers to the ability of humans to identify emotional states and is crucial in daily interactions and relationships. Expressing emotions forms the core of social interactions, facilitating appropriate responses in social situations.

Research has suggested that individuals who have better emotion recognition skills have better social adjustment, better school performance, and even better workplace success across a wide range of industries and job types.

Past research also suggests that experiences of childhood trauma such as neglect or abuse are one factor that has been associated with poorer emotion recognition skills. However, the breadth of these effects and their relationship with individual differences remain unclear.

What is Alexithymia?

According to Psychology Today, alexithymia, also known as emotional blindness, is a personality feature in which a person has difficulty experiencing, identifying, understanding, and expressing their emotions.

This can be influenced by several factors including genetics, past experiences, and certain medical conditions.

Current research suggests that about 50% of people with autism have alexithymia, compared to 10-13% of the general population. Men tend to experience alexithymia more than women.

Definition of Childhood Trauma

The researchers defined childhood trauma as exposure to actual or threatening behavior, serious injury, or sexual violence, and encompasses both neglect and abuse.

Childhood trauma has been associated with heightened emotional reactivity, low emotional awareness, and difficulties in regulating emotions. Childhood trauma is also associated with differences in recognizing others’ emotions; however, these are not uniform.

Studying Childhood Trauma and Emotion Recognition

In their study entitled “The association between childhood trauma and emotion recognition is reduced or eliminated when controlling for alexithymia and psychopathy traits”, Cooper, H., Jennings, B.J., Kumari, V. et al explored the effects of childhood trauma on emotion recognition ability.

122 participants over the age of 18 were recruited from an online site and an undergraduate course. Variables of individual differences were childhood trauma, psychopathy, and alexithymia.

Participants completed the following questionnaires:

  • 28-item childhood trauma questionnaire short-form (CTQ-SF), a widely used retrospective screening tool for childhood maltreatment in adults.
  • 29-item self-reported psychopathy scale short-form (SRP-SF), used to measure psychopathic traits
  • 20-item Toronto alexithymia questionnaire (TAS-20) that measures difficulty in identifying and describing emotions

Total scores from these questionnaires were standardized and used for analyses.

For emotional tasks, stimuli were selected from a database containing clips of actors expressing six of the seven basic emotions (happy, angry, sad, surprise, disgust, and fear) and a neutral condition across three modalities (audiovisual, face, and voice).

Emotional stimuli were presented at normal or strong intensity. A silent video of actors expressing a neutral or emotional expression was presented in the face modality.

Participants listened to an audio clip in the voice condition, while in the audiovisual condition, a clip with both video and audio was presented. They specified the emotion expressed in the clips.

The experiment was run online in four blocks

  1. Personality questionnaire
  2. TAS-20 and face task
  3. SRP-SF and voice task
  4. CTQ-SF and audiovisual task

The effect of childhood trauma alone on emotion recognition ability was examined using generalized mixed models and additionally controlled for psychopathy and alexithymia.

Study Results

In the model with childhood trauma and modality as fixed factors, there was a significant main effect of childhood trauma and modality. However, the effect size was small. The team found that higher childhood trauma was associated with poorer emotion recognition ability.

Accuracy was significantly better for audiovisual emotions than vocal and facial emotions. Interestingly, when controlling for psychopathy and alexithymia, childhood trauma was no longer significant.

The accuracy was significantly different between fear and neutral expressions; expressions of fear had significantly poorer accuracy. Notably, childhood trauma remained significant after controlling for psychopathy and alexithymia, with a significant main effect of emotion portrayed.

No significant interaction was observed between childhood trauma and the emotion portrayed, suggesting no variations in the effect of trauma across emotions.

Study Conclusion

The authors suggest in their paper that the relationship between childhood trauma and emotion recognition accuracy, when exploring intensity, may be significantly influenced by other related factors – in this case alexithymia.

This further enhances our understanding of the relationship between childhood trauma and emotion deficits.

In addition, childhood trauma alone had a significant association with emotion recognition ability when exploring modality, emotion portrayed, and intensity. More experience of childhood trauma was associated with poorer accuracy.

The authors emphasize in their conclusions that when controlling for alexithymia and psychopathy, childhood trauma only had a significant association with poorer accuracy when exploring emotion portrayed. This illustrates the importance of including and controlling for interrelated individual differences.

It may suggest that present theories involving childhood trauma and emotion deficits may need to account for factors such as higher levels of alexithymia and psychopathy traits in the groups being studied.

References

Cooper, H., Jennings, B.J., Kumari, V. et al. The association between childhood trauma and emotion recognition is reduced or eliminated when controlling for alexithymia and psychopathy traits. Sci Rep 14, 3413 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-53421-5

The post The Link Between Childhood Trauma and Emotion Recognition first appeared on Humintell.