The Neural Correlates of Implicit Emotion Regulation through Affect Labeling as Reflected in EEG
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: Affect labeling reduces emotional responses during and immediately after use, but evidence for lasting regulatory effects remains mixed. While there is no experiential evidence for lasting effects, psychophysiological studies do hint at a longer-lasting impact. However, neuroimaging research has mainly compared affect labeling with affect matching. Although both involve emotional processing, affect labeling additionally engages linguistic processing. Thus, it remains unclear whether observed neural differences reflect emotion-focused labeling or mere linguistic processing, and whether such effects endure over time. We recorded EEG to examine the effects of affect labeling on negative emotion across two re-exposure phases: immediate and after a short interval (15 minutes). Affect labeling (emotion-specific words) was compared with affect matching (emotion-focused perceptual processing) and feature labeling (linguistic processing without emotional content), allowing us to dissociate emotional and linguistic components. Event-related potentials and EEG oscillatory activity were analyzed in both phases, with pre-intervention neural responses included as baseline. Robust emotion-related neural activity was observed. Negative (vs. neutral) stimuli elicited increased late positive potential (LPP) amplitudes, enhanced fronto-central-parietal theta power, and greater right-hemispheric alpha activity. However, LPP, theta-, and alpha-band power did not show effects of affect labeling compared to the control conditions. Thus, the present findings provide no evidence for a lasting labeling effect. Because we focused on re-exposure, we may have missed potential regulatory effects during the intervention itself. Future research should further identify factors that influence the effectiveness of labeling and clarify when this implicit emotion regulation pathway is engaged.
Source: PsyArXiv (OSF Preprints)
Language: English
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7222999430