Abstract
Psychological research on stoicism, achieved experimentally using the emotion regulation strategy expressive suppression, indicates that it is associated with largely negative consequences. One negative consequence of expressive suppression that has not been well studied is its effect on viewing pain in others. In the present study we tested whether expressive suppression to pain in others reduced brain activity related to negative emotion, vicarious pain, or both (Aim 1). We also studied whether the consequences of expressive suppression to pain in others differed cross-culturally, following previously reported cross-cultural differences in expressive suppression (Aim 2). We sought to identify neurobiological mechanisms of the effect of expressive suppression on viewing pain in others using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Our findings suggest that a consequence of stoicism to pain in others is a reduction in the negative emotional experience of viewing pain in others, which may be key to generating empathic responses. Although there were no cross-cultural differences in neural representations associated with negative emotion, we found cross-cultural differences in brain activity associated with engaging in expressive suppression, and associations with interdependent self-construal, a culturally variable measure of the self in relation to others.