关键词: 依恋风格, 情绪效价, 情绪调节策略, ERP, fMRI

Abstract: How to regulate emotions and feelings is an important characterization of adult attachment. Adult attachment is a systematic pattern shaped by the interactive combination of the innate attachment behavior system and the special attachment experiences. Ainsworth firstly developed the Strange Situation test and identified three distinct patterns of attachment: anxious, avoidant and secure. Individuals with anxious attachment usually show a strong need for intimacy and are afraid of being refused. They chronically show overactivated emotional reactions that often cause concern among others. Individuals with avoidant attachment often suppress their emotions or deactivate their emotional expressions, which helps them to maintain a sufficient distance from others. They are both insecure attachment with poor emotion regulation abilities. Individuals who are securely attached can effectively deal with their emotional needs; they also frequently share their feelings with others, which can promote interpersonal communication and emotion regulation. The relationship between adult attachment styles and emotion regulation is also an important part of Bowlby’s researches. Integrating with Gross’s emotion regulation theory, this article discussed event- related potentials and functional magnetic resonance imaging neural characteristics of emotion regulation among anxious attachment, avoidant attachment and secure attachment. Gross’s theory divides the emotion regulation strategies in accordance with emotional reaction. Before the emotional reaction, it’s the antecedent- focused emotion regulation, including situation selection, situation modification, attentional deployment and cognitive reappraisal; after the emotional reaction, it’s the response- focused emotion regulation, including expression suppression. What’s more, it’s also helpful to clarify individual’s mental characteristics by discussing the regulation of negative emotion and positive emotion. First, this article discussed the emotion regulation strategies in anxious attachment. Through the study of the early compositions (C1, P2, P300), amygdala and other brain regions, it was found that anxious attachment had the advantage of attentional deployment strategy and the disadvantage of expression suppression strategy while dealing with negative emotion. They tended to be more open when regulating positive emotion, but it still needs to be clarified because the existing experimental materials were not uniform and the evidences from the ERP and fMRI conflict. Then, it was found that both the cognitive reappraisal and expression suppression strategies were adopted by the avoidant attachment. Expression suppression strategy is the main option of avoidant attachment when they processed negative and positive emotion, and the evidences from their reduction of subjective feelings and physiological responses also indicated avoidant individuals’ bias of cognitive reappraisal strategy in dealing with positive emotion. After that, we integrated the features of the positive and negative emotion regulation in the secure attachment due to many similarities in these two emotional scenarios. Results showed that they were in favor of attentional deployment, cognitive reappraisal and situation modification strategies. These strategies not only helped the secure attachment to process emotion more effectively, but also improved individual’s cognitive ability. At last, suggestions were given after systemizing the emotion regulation strategies of different attachment styles. It’s necessary to highlight the role of situational stimuli on the attachment studies and it’s also urgent to look for new evidences of automatic emotion regulation and control emotion regulation to complement the related researches in attachment. And from the practical point of view, it is significant to promote the improvement of emotion regulation strategies in insecure attachment.

Key words: attachment style, emotion valence, emotion regulation strategy, ERP, fMRI