Investigating the Neural Systems That Support the Beneficial Effects of Positive Emotion on Stress Regulation

Following the VR task, participants were asked to report the task instructions in their own words. The first questions asked participants to reiterate the instructions they were given for the cognitive reappraisal task (for example: "What were you instructed to do during the 'LOOK' trials?") This is a fill in the blank question and there are no right or wrong answers. All participants' responses are viewed to ensure understanding of the task instruction. There are no scores to report for this measure. Rather this, outcome serves more as a comprehension check than an actual analysis of interest.

The next batch of questions asked the participants questions about the difficulty of the task. The questions asked were: "How difficult was it to follow the 'LOOK' instruction?" And: "How difficult was it to follow the 'DECREASE' instruction?" Participants will be rating the level of difficulty on a scale of 1 to 7 with 1 being "not difficult at all" to 7 being "very difficult". There are no right or wrong answers to this question. The range of scores is 1-7.

Participants were asked about self-reported task compliance. For example, one question asked "What percentage of the time were you able to follow the "LOOK" instruction?" The participants were rating their self-compliance for each task from 0% (non-compliant) to 100% (fully compliant). There are no right or wrong answers to this question and these responses are more descriptive/exploratory. They are not used in any specific analyses. The number of participants analyzed below indicates the number of participants that were fully compliant across both conditions.

Participants were asked whether they have any experience with reappraisal or the specific images presented in the task. The first question asked "Have you ever been trained to change your emotions by changing the way you think (in therapy, or in another experiment, or anywhere else)?" Participants can choose "Yes" or "No" for this question. The participant will have to extrapolate if they have changed their emotions before using a fill in the blank. The next question asked"Have you ever seen any of these exact emotional images before?" If participants answered yes, they were once again asked to extrapolate which images they have seen and what emotional response was generated by these images using a fill in the blank option. These are descriptive and not used in any formal analyses. The number of participants analyzed below indicates the the number of participant responses we reviewed.

The theories of emotion scale was developed for use by Maya Tamir, Oliver P. John, Sanjay Srivastava, and James J. Gross in 2007, based on Carol Dweck's Implicit Theories of Intelligence scale (Dweck, 1999). It's used to measure beliefs about the malleable nature of emotion on a scale of 1 (strong disagree) to 5 (strongly agree) where higher scores indicate stronger agreement with the belief. There are 4 items, 2 of which are reverse coded. Scores are taken by averaging the response items. The minimum score is 1 and the maximum range is 5.

A 10 item self-report scale that is designed to measure the big five personality traits (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness) on a scale of 1-5 where higher values indicate higher indication of the personality trait. Certain individual items are reversed scored on this measure. The subscales in our data were calculated using averages to produce a score. The possible range for each subscale reported included a minimum value of 1 and a maximum value of 5.

The BRS is a self-report measure that assesses the ability to bounce back or recover from stress on a 1-5 scale. Higher scores indicate higher levels of resilience.

A 5-item scale designed to measure global cognitive judgments of one's life satisfaction (not a measure of either positive or negative affect). Participants indicate how much they agree or disagree with each of the 5 items using a 7-point scale that ranges from 7 strongly agree to 1 strongly disagree. Higher scores indicate higher levels of satisfaction. The scale is summed to produce a score, and the possible range of scores is 5-35.

The Igroup Presence Questionnaire (IPQ) is a self-report scale for measuring the sense of presence experienced in a virtual environment (VE). It contains three subscales that assess aspects of presence: spatial presence, involvement, and experience realism. Higher scores indicate higher sense of presence. Items were rated on a scale of 0 to 6 and items for each subscale are averaged to get each subscale core. The Range for all subscales are 0-6.

The Brief-COPE is a 28 item self-report questionnaire designed to measure effective and ineffective ways to cope with a stressful life event. Sub-scales are reported. Higher scores indicate higher use of the coping strategy. he Brief COPE is comprised of 14 scales, each of which assesses the degree to which a respondent utilizes a specific coping strategy. The scales are: Active Coping, Planning, Positive Reframing, Acceptance, Humor, Religion, Using Emotional Support, Using Instrumental Support, Self-Distraction, Denial, Venting, Substance Use, Behavioral Disengagement, Self-Blame. Items are rated on a 4-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 - "I haven't been doing this at all" to 4 - "I've been doing this a lot." Each of the scales is comprised of 2 items; total scores on each scale range from 2 (minimum) to 8 (maximum).

Total scores for each sub scales are calculated by summing the items. There is no overall total score.