Bringing patients out of the gloom: Examining the effects of patient power and affect labeling on emotional experience reflected in emotional judgement

Objective

Negative emotions are common among patients in medical settings. It is important to investigate impacts of patient power and affect labeling on emotional experience in patients.

Methods

Behavioral judgments and event-related potentials (ERPs) were recorded while participants with high or low patient power made emotional judgments (positive, negative) about neutral faces, as well as investigating how affect labeling (affect labeling, viewing) influenced emotional judgments about neutral faces in participants with low patient power.

Results

Individuals with low patient power made more and faster negative emotion judgements. A larger late positive component (LPC) amplitude was found in negative emotion judgments for individuals with low patient power, a component related to allocation of attentional resources to motivationally salient stimuli. Affect labeling elicited less and slower negative emotion judgments in individuals with low patient power.

Conclusions

These results suggest that low patient power triggers negative emotion, which can be reduced by affect labeling.

Practice implications

The current findings provide valuable insights into reducing negative emotions in patients, fostering promising targets for training for medical professionals and education for patients aiming to ensure more humanistic and higher-quality care delivery.