Timing effects of antecedent- and response-focused emotion regulation strategies

•Testing timing hypotheses of antecedent- and response-focused emotion regulation.•The LPP to negative IAPS pictures was measured during instructed emotion regulation.•Reappraisal attenuated the LPP later (at 700ms) than distraction (at 300ms).•Surprisingly, expressive suppression also affected the LPP at early stages (300ms).•Preparation of expressive suppression might target antecedents of emotion. Distraction and cognitive reappraisal influence the emotion-generative process at early stages and have been shown to effectively attenuate emotional responding. Inhibiting emotion-expressive behavior is thought to be less beneficial due to later implementation, but empirical results are mixed. Thus, the current study examined the temporal dynamics of these emotion regulation strategies at attenuating the late positive potential (LPP) while participants were shown unpleasant pictures. Results revealed that all strategies successfully reduced the LPP and self-reported negative affect. We confirmed that distraction attenuated the LPP earlier than cognitive reappraisal. Surprisingly, expressive suppression affected emotional responding as early as distraction. This suggests that suppression was used preventively and disrupted the emotion-generative process from the very beginning instead of targeting the emotional response itself. Thus, the obtained results point to the importance of considering the point in time when response-focused emotion regulation strategies are being implemented.