Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-tj2md Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-16T08:09:41.369Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Gender Differences in the Sensitivity to Negative Stimuli: Cross-Modal Affective Priming Study☆

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 September 2011

B. Gohier ,
C. Senior ,
P.J. Brittain ,
N. Lounes ,
W. El-Hage ,
V. Law ,
M.L. Phillips  and
S.A. Surguladze
B. Gohier*
Affiliation:
Département de psychiatrie, UPRES EA 2646, CHU d'Angers, 49033Angers, France
C. Senior
Affiliation:
School of Life & Health Sciences, Aston University, Aston Triangle, Birmingham, B4 7ET, UK
P.J. Brittain
Affiliation:
Department of Psychosis, King's College, London Institute of Psychiatry, De Crespigny Park, London, SE5 8AF, UK
N. Lounes
Affiliation:
Department of Psychosis, King's College, London Institute of Psychiatry, De Crespigny Park, London, SE5 8AF, UK
W. El-Hage
Affiliation:
Inserm U-930, FRE CNRS 2448, université François-Rabelais, clinique psychiatrique universitaire, CHRU de Tours, Tours, France
V. Law
Affiliation:
Department of Psychosis, King's College, London Institute of Psychiatry, De Crespigny Park, London, SE5 8AF, UK
M.L. Phillips
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, USA Department of Psychological Medicine, Cardiff University School of Medicine, UK
S.A. Surguladze
Affiliation:
Department of Psychosis, King's College, London Institute of Psychiatry, De Crespigny Park, London, SE5 8AF, UK Cygnet Health Care, UK
*
⁎Corresponding author. E-mail address: begohier@chu-angers.fr (B. Gohier).
Get access

Abstract

Background

There is evidence showing that men and women differ with regard to the processing of emotional information. However, the mechanisms behind these differences are not fully understood.

Method

The sample comprised of 275 (167 female) right-handed, healthy participants, recruited from the community. We employed a customized affective priming task, which consisted of three subtests, differing in the modality of the prime (face, written word, and sound). The targets were always written words of either positive or negative valence. The priming effect was measured as reaction time facilitation in conditions where both prime and target were emotional (of the same positive or negative valence) compared with conditions where the emotional targets were preceded by neutral primes.

Results

The priming effect was observed across all three modalities, with an interaction of gender by valence: the priming effect in the emotionally negative condition in male participants was stronger compared with females. This was accounted for by the differential priming effect within the female group where priming was significantly smaller in the emotionally negative conditions compared with the positive conditions. The male participants revealed a comparable priming effect across both the emotionally negative and positive conditions.

Conclusion

Reduced priming in negative conditions in women may reflect interference processes due to greater sensitivity to negative valence of stimuli. This in turn could underlie the gender-related differences in susceptibility to emotional disorders.

Keywords

GenderPrimingEmotionCross-modal
Type
Original article
Information
European Psychiatry , Volume 28 , Issue 2 , February 2013 , pp. 74 - 80
Copyright
Copyright © Elsevier Masson SAS 2013

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

☆

The study was conducted at the Department of Psychosis Studies, Institute of Psychiatry, King's college, London.

References

Accortt, E.E., Freeman, M.P., Allen, J.J.Women and major depressive disorder: clinical perspective on causal pathways. J Womens Health 2008;17:1583–1590.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Beck, A.T.Depression: causes and treatment. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press; 1967.Google Scholar
Beck, A.T., Steer, R.A., Brown, G.K.Manual for the Beck Depression Inventory-II. San Antonio, TX: Psychological Corporation; 1996.Google Scholar
Bradley, M.M., Lang, P.J.Affective norms for English words (ANEW): stimuli, instruction manual and affective ratings. Technical report C-1. Gainesville, FL: University of Florida; 1999.Google Scholar
Bradley, B.P., Mogg, K., Williams, R.Implicit and explicit memory for emotional information in non-clinical subjects. Behav Res Ther 1994;32:65–78.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bradley, B.P., Mogg, K., Williams, R.Implicit and explicit memory for emotion-congruent information in clinical depression and anxiety. Behav Res Ther 1995;33:755–770.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Burton, L.A., Rabin, L., Bernstein Vardy, S., Frohlich, J., Wyatt, G., Dimitri, D.et al.Gender differences in implicit and explicit memory for affective passages. Brain Cogn 2004;54:218–224.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Burton, L.A., Rabin, L., Wyatt, G., Frohlich, J., Vardy, S., Dimitri, D.Priming effects for affective vs neutral faces. Brain Cogn 2005;59:322–329.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Campanella, S., Bruyer, R., Froidbise, S., Rossignol, M., Joassin, F., Kornreich, C.et al.Is two better than one? A cross-modal oddball paradigm reveals greater sensivity of the P300 to emotional face-voice associations. Clin Neurophysiol 2010;121:1855–1862.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Caroll, N.C., Young, A.W.Priming of emotion recognition. Q J Exp Psychol 2005;A58:1173–1197.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Collignon, O., Girard, S., Gosselin, F., Saint-Amour, D., Lepore, F., Lassonde, M.Women process multisensory emotion expressions more efficiently than men. Neuropsychologia 2010;48:220–225.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dai, Q., Feng, Z., Koster, E.H.Deficient distracter inhibition and enhanced facilitation for emotional stimuli in depression: an ERP study. Int J Psychophysiol 2011;79:249–258.Google ScholarPubMed
Dannlowski, U., Kersting, A., Lalee-Mentzel, J., Donges, U.S., Arolt, V., Suslow, T.Subliminal affective priming in clinical depression and comorbid anxiety: a longitudinal investigation. Psychiatry Res 2006;143:63–75.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Domes, D., Schulze, L., Böttger, M., Grossmann, A., Hauenstein, K., Wirtz PHet, al.The neural correlates of sex differences in emotional reactivity and emotion regulation. Hum Brain Mapp 2010;31:758–769.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Fazio, R.H., Sanbonmatsu, D.M., Powell, M.C., Kardes, F.R.On the automatic of attitudes. J Pers Soc Psychol 1986;50:229–238.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Folstein, M.F., Folstein, S.E., McHugh, P.R.Mini Mental State: a practical method for grading the cognitive state of patients for the clinician. J. Psychiatr Res 1975;12:189–198.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Goeleven, E., Raedt, R., De Baert, S., Koster, E.H.Deficient inhibition of emotional information in depression. J Affect Disord 2006;93:149–157.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gohier, B., Ferracci, L., Surguladze, S.A., Lawrence, E., El Hage, W., Zied Kefi, M.et al.Cognitive inhibition and working memory in unipolar depression. J Affect Disord 2009;16:100–105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldberg, D.P., Hillier, V.F.A scale version of the General Health Questionnaire. Psychol Med 1979;9:139–145.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kessler, R.C.Epidemiology of women and depression. J Affect Disord 2003;74:5–13.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Klauer, K.C., Musch, J.Affective priming: findings and theories. In: Musch, J., Klauer, K.C. editors. The psychology of evaluation: affective processes in cognition and emotion. Erlbaum L: Mahwah NJ; 2003. p. 7–49.Google Scholar
Klauer, K.C., Rossnagel, C., Musch, J.List-context effects in evaluative priming. J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn 1997;23:246–255.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Knyazev, G.G., Slobodskoj-Plusnin, J.Y., Bocharov, A.V.Gender differences in implicit and explicit processing of emotional facial expressions as revealed by event-related theta synchronization. Emotion 2010;5:678–687.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Koch, K., Pauly, K., Kellermann, T., Seiferth, N.Y., Reske, M., Backes, V.et al.Gender differences in the cognitive control of emotion: an fMRI study. Neuropsychologia 2007;45:2744–2754.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Logan, G.D., Zbrodoff, N.J.When it helps to be misled: facilitative effects of increasing the frequency of conflicting stimuli in a Stroop-like task. Mem Cognit 1979;7:166–174.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mak, A.K., Hu, Z.G., Zhang, J.X., Xiao, Z., Lee, T.M.Sex-related differences in neural activity during emotion regulation. Neuropsychologia 2009;47:2900–2908.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McCabe, C., Cowen, P.J., Harmer, C.J.Neural representation of reward in recovered depressed patients. Psychopharmacology 2009;205:667–677.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McRae, K., Ochsner, K.N., Mauss, I.B., Gabrieli, J.D., Gross, J.Gender differences in emotion regulation: an fMRI study of cognitive reappraisal. Group Process Intergroup Relat 2008;11:143–162.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Nelson, H.E.National Adult Reading Test. 2nd ed.UK: NFER-Nelson, Windsor; 1991.Google Scholar
Power, M.J., Cameron, C.M., Dalgleish, T.Emotional priming in clinically depressed subjects. J Affect Disord 1986;38:1–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rohrmann, S., Hopp, H., Schienle, A., Hodapp, V.Emotion regulation, disgust sensitivity, and psychophysiological responses to a disgust-inducing film. Anxiety Stress Coping 2009;22:215–236.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sauter, D.A., Scott, S.K.More than one kind of happiness: can we recognize vocal expressions of different positive states. Motiv Emot 2007;31:192–199.Google Scholar
Scher, C.D., Ingram, R.E., Segal, Z.V.Cognitive reactivity and vulnerability: empirical evaluation of construct activation and cognitive diatheses in unipolar depression. Clin Psychol Rev 2005;25:487–510.Google ScholarPubMed
Schienle, A., Schäfer, A., Stark, R., Walter, B., Vaitl, D.Gender differences in the processing of disgust- and fear-inducing pictures: an fMRI study. Brain Imaging 2005;16:277–280.Google ScholarPubMed
Spielberger, G.D., Gorush, R.L., Lusshene, R.E.The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psychologists Press; 1970.Google Scholar
Thayer, J.F., Johnsen, B.H.Sex differences in judgement of facial affect: a multivariate analysis of recognition errors. Scand J Psychol 2000;41:243–246.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Williams, J.M., Mathews, A., MacLeod, C.The emotional Stroop task and psychopathology. Psychol Bull 1996;120:3–24.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Young, A., Perrett, D., Calder, A., Sprengelmeyer, R., Ekman, P.Facial Expressions of Emotion: Stimuli and Tests (FEEST). Bury St. Edmunds: Thames Valley Test Company, 2002.Google Scholar
Submit a response

Comments

No Comments have been published for this article.