Granting forgiveness or harboring grudges: implications for emotion, physiology, and health.

Interpersonal offenses frequently mar relationships. Theorists have argued that the responses victims adopt toward their offenders have ramifications not only for their cognition, but also for their emotion, physiology, and health. This study examined the immediate emotional and physiological effects that occurred when participants (35 females, 36 males) rehearsed hurtful memories and nursed grudges (i.e., were unforgiving) compared with when they cultivated empathic perspective taking and imagined granting forgiveness (i.e., were forgiving) toward real-life offenders. Unforgiving thoughts prompted more aversive emotion, and significantly higher corrugator (brow) electromyogram (EMG), skin conductance, heart rate, and blood pressure changes from baseline. The EMG, skin conductance, and heart rate effects persisted after imagery into the recovery periods. Forgiving thoughts prompted greater perceived control and comparatively lower physiological stress responses. The results dovetail with the psychophysiology literature and suggest possible mechanisms through which chronic unforgiving responses may erode health whereas forgiving responses may enhance it.

Emotional imagery, the visual startle, and covariation bias: an affective matching account.

This study assessed the effects of imagery valence and arousal on the visually prompted startle reflex, heart rate, and estimates of probe occurrence in 24 males and 22 females. Valence and arousal independently augmented startle magnitudes, similar to prior research with acoustic probes (Witvliet, C.V.O., Vrana, S.R., 1995. Psychophysiological responses as indices of affective dimensions, Psychophysiology 32, 436-443). In both of these studies, arousal exerted stronger effects than valence on the startle reflex. Arousal also facilitated heart rate acceleration. Participants' estimates of startle flash occurrence reflected a covariation bias. Estimates were higher and more accurate for the high-arousal conditions and for the negative conditions, paralleling startle magnitude findings. Results suggest that affective response matching processes (rather than affective stimulus matching) influenced both startle reflex magnitudes and probe frequency estimates. Comparisons with the covariation bias literature are drawn, differences are addressed, and directions for future research are suggested.

Traumatic intrusive imagery as an emotional memory phenomenon: a review of research and explanatory information processing theories.

Intrusive imagery is both a common response to trauma and a hallmark of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. However, its features and underlying mechanisms have not been reviewed systematically. This paper delineates the characteristics of intrusions and critically reviews the literature, conceptualizing intrusive imagery as an emotional memory phenomenon. This approach integrates otherwise separate research arenas in emotion and memory, psychobiology, pharmacology, and physiology, which converge to suggest that intrusive imagery is driven primarily by affective arousal and sympathetic nervous system reactivity. These basic and applied research findings are addressed directly by three information processing theories, which are reviewed and critiqued for their heuristic value in accounting for intrusions. Directions for research, treatment, and assessment are presented.