Bottom-up and top-down influences of beliefs on emotional responses: fear of heights in a virtual environment.

According to cognitive approaches in emotion research, emotions hinge on beliefs that can be true or false. We suggest that emotionally relevant beliefs can be influenced bottom-up e.g. by the depth cues of a virtual environment or top-down e.g. by reappraisal strategies. Our research question is if bottom-up and top-down processes influence the same belief structure or if different belief structures are responsible for bottom-up and top-down influences on emotions. To test these assumptions we exposed participants to a virtual environment that is able to elicit fear of heights and manipulated reappraisal for half of the participants. Moreover, we presented virtual scenes of heights in a monoscopic (less depth cues) and stereoscopic (more depth cues) mode in order to influence the confirmatory processes that are associated with beliefs. Subjective intensity of discomfort and the bending angle as a behavioural response were measured. We observed that although the depth cues and the reappraisal strategy were both effective in reducing the feeling of discomfort, reappraisal and the mode of presentation exert independent effects. Thus, beliefs that are triggered by bottom-up processes (depth cues) change emotions independent of the beliefs triggered by top-down processes (reappraisal).