Gender differences in cognitive and affective interpersonal emotion regulation in couples: an fNIRS hyperscanning

Abstract Emotion regulation is vital in maintaining romantic relationships in couples. Although gender differences exist in cognitive and affective strategies during ‘intrapersonal’ emotion regulation, it is unclear how gender differences through affective bonds work in ‘interpersonal’ emotion regulation (IER) in couples. Thirty couple dyads and 30 stranger dyads underwent functional near-infrared spectroscopy hyperscanning recordings when targets complied with their partner’s cognitive engagement (CE) and affective engagement (AE) strategies after viewing sad and neutral videos. Behaviorally, for males, CE was less effective than AE in both groups, but little difference occurred for females between AE and CE. For couples, Granger causality analysis showed that male targets had less neural activity than female targets in CH06, CH13 and CH17 during CE. For inflow and outflow activities on CH06 and CH13 (frontopolar cortex), respectively, male targets had less activity in the CE condition than in the AE condition, while for outflow activities on CH 17 (dorsolateral prefrontal cortex), female targets had more activity in the CE condition than in the AE condition. However, these differences were not observed in strangers. These results suggest gender differences in CE but not in AE and dissociable flow patterns in male and female targets in couples during sadness regulation.