关键词: 人际情绪调节, 观察学习性恐惧, 自我情绪调节, 认知重评

Abstract: Fear serves an important adaptive function; however, excessive fear expression poses substantial risks to mental health and is closely associated with pathological conditions such as anxiety disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Cognitive reappraisal has been demonstrated to mitigate directly acquired fear within an interpersonal emotion regulation framework. However, its effectiveness in regulating vicariously learned fear remains unclear. Given the prosperity of online social media, which allows fear to be readily acquired through observation and social transmission, often resulting in widespread and persistent negative consequences, identifying efficient emotion regulation strategies to intervene in such fear is of paramount importance.
To address this issue, this study used demonstrator videos to induce vicariously learned fear and integrated behavioral measures and event-related potential (ERP) techniques to systematically investigate the effects of interpersonal emotion regulation—based on cognitive reappraisal—on vicariously learned fear. Experiment 1 focused on behavioral outcomes, including threat perception, threat expectancy, and avoidance behavior, and Experiment 2 further explored the underlying electrophysiological correlates (P2, P3, and LPP). Experiment 1 adopted a 2 (stimulus type: CS+ vs. CS-) × 2 (phase: acquisition vs. regulation) × 3 (group: interpersonal regulation vs. self-regulation vs. no regulation) mixed design. A total of 90 participants completed the experiment. Experiment 2 employed a 2 (group: self-emotion regulation vs. interpersonal emotion regulation) × 2 (stimulus type: CS+ vs. CS-) × 2 (phase: viewing vs. regulation) mixed design. The final valid EEG sample comprised 44 participants.
The findings revealed a consistent pattern across two experiments: (1) Both the interpersonal emotion regulation and self-emotion regulation strategies significantly reduced threat perception and threat expectancy elicited by conditioned stimuli predicting a shock. Importantly, interpersonal emotion regulation produced significantly greater reduction in these fear-related responses than the self-emotion regulation in Experiment 1. (2) Replicating and extending these findings, behavioral results in Experiment 2 showed that participants in the interpersonal emotion regulation condition reported significantly lower levels of coping difficulty during strategy implementation and exhibited fewer avoidance behaviors compared to those in the self-emotion regulation condition. (3) ERP findings provided neural evidence supporting these behavioral advantages. During the regulation phase, interpersonal emotion regulation produced a more pronounced reduction in the late positive potential (LPP) wave amplitude than self-regulation. Moreover, during the subsequent test phase, where conditioned stimuli were presented without regulator support or explicit regulation instructions, participants in the IER group exhibited significantly smaller P2 and P3 amplitudes than those in the self-emotion regulation group. (4) Correlation analysis revealed a significant positive correlation between shock anticipation and LPP amplitude during the viewing and regulation phases, and the enhanced P3 amplitudes were associated with increased emotional coping difficulty.
These results yield two primary conclusions. First, cognitive reappraisal can effectively regulate vicariously learned fear in both self-regulation and interpersonal regulation contexts, extending the utility of this strategy beyond directly experienced fear. More importantly, interpersonal emotion regulation was more effective than self-regulation in attenuating vicariously learned fear. This advantage may stem from reduced subjective regulatory difficulty, thereby enabling a more efficient implementation of cognitive reappraisal. These findings are consistent with social baseline theory, indicating that social support helps individuals decrease the physiological and cognitive costs of coping with negative experiences through resource and risk sharing. Furthermore, this study provides an empirical foundation for research on fear extinction, particularly concerning vicariously learned fear.

Key words: interpersonal emotion regulation, vicariously learned fear, self-emotion regulation, cognitive reappraisal