Peripheral signatures of affect in psychotherapists: Cardiac modulations during visualization of clinical sessions

DÍAZ MIGUEZ, NATALIA; SEDEÑO, LUCAS; PUTRINO, NATALIA; IBÁÑEZ, AGUSTÍN; GARCÍA, ADOLFO M.; YORIS, ADRIÁN; MESURADO, BELÉN

Buenos Aires

Conferencia; 50th International Annual Meeting of the Society for Psychotherapy Research; 2019

Aims: This research proposes an unprecedented multidimensional assessment of the behavioral, cardiac, and neurophysiological signatures of affective processing in professional psychotherapists. Specifically, we will focus on assessing their reactions to patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) and two control conditions, namely: major depression (MD) and neutral affect. In this presentation, we will focus on data from our electrocardiographic and behavioral assessmentsMethods: The study involves 35 clinical psychologists and 35 matched controls. Participants watched the clinical sessions while we recorded emotion-sensitive peripheral measures (heart rate [HR] and heart-rate variability [HRV]). The naturalistic videos reflect dynamic interactions between a psychotherapist and patients with three profiles: ambivalent (BPD), mournful (MD), and neutral. Furthermore, we assessed the subjects? empathic and emotional regulation profiles with the Interpersonal Reactivity Index and the Emotional Regulation Questionnaire, respectively.Results: Although data are still being analyzed, we predicted that, relative to controls, psychotherapists would obtain higher empathy and emotional regulation self-report scores than controls. Also, we hypothesized that psychotherapists would exhibit less markers of emotional dysregulation (increased HRV, less HR) during visualization of sessions with BPD patients and depressive subjects (but not in the affectively neutral interactions). Discussion: With its novel multimethodological and ecological approach, our study has the potential to illuminate possible links between autonomic and neurocognitive processes underlying the particular affective profile of psychotherapists and their reaction in the face of different emotional states of others. This framework paves the way for fruitful research at the crossing of social cognition and psychotherapy.