This study investigated the duration of emotional responses to emotionally valenced stimuli and explored the relationship between objective [as assessed by skin conductance activity (SC)] and subjective measurements of emotional reactivity.

A sample of 100 healthy volunteers, stratified for age and gender, viewed 54 images from the International Affective Picture System equally split in positive, negative and neutral categories. Subjects pressed a button to view the next image when they judged that their response had subsided (time to emotional resolution, TTR) and then rated the intensity of their response on a scale from 1 to 9 (highest). The number of skin conductance responses (SCRs) and the maximum amplitude (μS) were also acquired and averaged for each condition (mean ± SD).

Picture valence had a significant effect on all measures(p<0.001). TTR (sec) was 11.01±6.57, 14.74±7.82 and 5.27±3.57 while arousal ratings were 5.65±1.80, 7.46±1.78 and 1.77± 0.87 for positive, negative and neutral images, respectively. Maximum amplitude was 0.19±0.14, 0.22±0.17 and 0.16±0.12 while SCRs were 23.76±14.06, 29.67±19.04 and 18.52±10.81 for positive, negative and neutral images, respectively. A correlation matrix of all measures showed significant association between TTR and SCRs (p<0.001) only.

TTR correlated with SCRs indicating that participants viewed the next image when their level of arousal subsided. However, the poor correlation between SC and arousal ratings suggests that when appraising the intensity of their responses, participants were accessing other aspects of emotional processing than arousal alone.