Previous research indicates that the effectiveness of emotion regulation (ER) strategies varies across response systems, such as subjective affect and physiological arousal. Yet it remains unclear how these effects scale with stimulus intensity. The present study examined reactivity to affective picture stimuli of different intensities and compared the effects of three ER strategies (reappraisal, acceptance, and suppression) on subjective affect and facial electromyography (EMG) in a non-clinical sample of young adults (n = 88). In a within-subject design, participants saw neutral, low-, or high-intensity stimuli and either passively viewed the pictures (no-regulation control condition) or applied one of the three ER strategies.

In the no-regulation control condition, emotional reactivity showed a clear intensity gradient: high-intensity stimuli elicited the strongest responses, both regarding subjective affect and corrugator activity. In the regulation conditions, subjective affect varied with both stimulus intensity and regulation strategy. Reappraisal consistently reduced negative affect relative to all other strategies, whereas acceptance and suppression had no significant effect relative to the control condition. For corrugator activity, effects of regulation strategies were primarily observed for high-intensity stimuli, with acceptance leading to a significant increase in corrugator activity. Temporal analyses revealed that differences between strategies emerged approximately 3 s after stimulus onset and were most pronounced for high-intensity stimuli.

Together, these findings demonstrate that the effectiveness of emotion regulation strategies is contingent on both stimulus intensity and the emotional response system assessed, rather than reflecting a uniform effect across emotional domains or measurement modalities.

In facial electromyography (EMG) studies, emotion regulation (ER) is typically inferred from multi-second time windows, which can obscure finer temporal dynamics. This study examined the value of analyzing facial EMG in more fine-grained millisecond segments. Using two datasets that implemented the same cognitive ER paradigm, euthymic patients with bipolar I disorder (BD-I; n = 22), matched healthy controls (n = 22), and an independent healthy sample (n = 105) viewed negative and neutral pictures and either passively viewed or reappraised them. Corrugator EMG was analyzed using contrasts indexing emotion induction (negative minus neutral) and reappraisal-related modulation (view minus reappraise) across consecutive 100-ms intervals from ER instruction onset to trial end (0-4800 ms). Trait ER was assessed with the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ) and Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ).

During passive viewing, corrugator activity unfolded similarly across groups, indicating comparable emotional reactivity and successful induction of negative affect. Time-resolved analyses provided additional information about reappraisal effects: in the healthy sample, reappraisal-related reductions in corrugator activity emerged at 600-700 ms after instruction onset, whereas BD-I showed a weaker and later reduction, suggesting altered temporal dynamics of reappraisal-related facial responding.

A higher temporal resolution may help identify when alterations in reappraisal-related corrugator responding become detectable over the brow region. These findings support the utility of fine-grained facial EMG for characterizing the temporal dynamics of cognitive reappraisal and suggest that such measures may be useful outcomes for future clinical and intervention studies.

Emotion regulation strategies are often qualified as either adaptive or maladaptive. However, adaptive strategies often require cognitive and physical resources that are not equally available across individuals, and their effectiveness may depend on the intensity of the emotional response they are meant to regulate. In this study we wanted first to highlight whether people with different maladaptive personality trait profiles facially express their emotions differently. More importantly, we wanted to dynamically analyze facial expressivity of these different groups while they were attempting emotion regulation to see whether we noticed regulation efficiency difference in terms of intensity and dynamics.

A total of 354 students viewed emotional images, while facial electromyography (EMG) was recorded on the several facial sites during the 8s trials. During part of the viewing, participants also implemented different emotion regulation strategies: Reappraisal, Suppression, Situation Selection, or Distraction.

Personality analyses led to four clusters of distinct maladaptive traits profiles. EMG showed little group differences in unregulated emotional expression but marked differences emerged during emotion regulation, with variability across personality profiles in both the intensity and temporal dynamics of facial activity. Differences were strategy-specific, appearing for instance in reappraisal but not in suppression, and varied depending on whether intensity or dynamic features were considered.

These findings suggest that the effectiveness of emotion regulation at the expressive level is not only strategy-dependent but also dynamically shaped by individual personalities. This highlights the importance of moving beyond static, one-size-fits-all models of regulation toward a more temporally and person-sensitive understanding of expressivity regulation.

Startle electromyography (EMG) was recorded during the presentation of negative, positive, neutral, and trauma-related cue–context pairs in individuals with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD; n = 19), trauma-exposed controls without PTSD (NPTSD; n = 17), and non-trauma-exposed healthy controls (HC; n = 17). Overall startle reactivity showed no significant modulation by emotional valence across any group.

Inspection of individual response profiles revealed substantial heterogeneity within the PTSD group, consistent with a bimodal distribution of physiological responding. Two subtypes were identified: a normal-reactive subgroup (n = 12) showing moderate, well-scaled responses, and a hyper-reactive subgroup (n = 7) characterised by elevated but non-selective responding across conditions. When analyses were restricted to normal responders, emotional modulation of startle was evident in healthy and trauma-exposed controls but was reduced or absent in PTSD. In the full sample, hyper-reactive individuals produced large-amplitude responses across all conditions, thereby masking condition-specific effects at the group level.

These findings indicate that PTSD is not characterised by uniform blunting or sensitisation of defensive responding, but by disrupted affective selectivity in the context of marked physiological heterogeneity. EEG–eye-tracking data showed that faster orienting to trauma-related cues is associated with greater startle amplitude (ρ = −.285, p = .045), suggesting that rapid attentional capture of the cue without context is coupled with increased defensive arousal.

Emotion regulation can be conceptualized as a dynamic control process that requires ongoing monitoring of regulatory efficacy and adaptive adjustment when current strategies fail. To test this adaptive-control account, we employed an emotion regulation strategy-switching task to examine whether peripheral bodily signals are linked to decisions to maintain or switch strategies.

In a preregistered study (N = 63, M_age = 24.8 years, all female), participants first passively viewed negative stimuli and then implemented an instructed strategy (reappraisal or distraction) before deciding whether to maintain or switch strategies. Corrugator supercilii activity indexed negative affect during both stimulus exposure and initial strategy implementation.

Stronger corrugator responses during stimulus exposure predicted subsequent switching to distraction, consistent with prior evidence that distraction is preferentially selected under high emotional intensity. Critically, reduced downregulation of corrugator activity during initial strategy implementation predicted subsequent switching irrespective of strategy, indicating that lower regulatory efficacy is associated with strategy adjustment.

These findings suggest that corrugator activity may provide information relevant for dynamic control decisions. Peripheral affective signals appear to track both emotional intensity and regulatory efficacy and may contribute to determining when to maintain versus shift regulatory strategies, highlighting a functional role of bodily feedback in adaptive emotion regulation.