70 Chapter 3 stimuli in our sample. Although the reason for this discrepancy is not entirely clear, it suggests that higher CEM levels do not result in differential mood responses when seeing oneself versus a stranger. CEM did not affect people’s amount of gaze into one’s own or other’s eyes. Nor did CEM differentially affect how much people gazed into the eyes of the targets during direct versus averted gaze videos. This is not in line with our hypotheses and clinical observations that people reporting more CEM show a greater tendency to avoid eye contact (Krill, 2011; Wilkinson, 2010). A possible explanation for this discrepancy is that the stimuli used in the eye contact task were prerecorded videos instead of real-life mutual gaze encounters similar to the clinical observations. This is emphasized by studies showing that eye contact only elevated participants’ levels of arousal in case of real-life bidirectional eye contact (Hietanen et al., 2020; Jarick & Bencic, 2019). Future studies on eye contact during real-life interactions should elucidate whether people’s gaze towards one’s own or others’ eyes co-varies with people’s reported CEM levels while receiving real-time visual feedback from the eyes of oneself (e.g., via a mirror) and others. Observed associations between CEM and participants’ neural responses is striking given that the average age of our current sample was ±50 years, suggesting that the impact of CEM is still discernable well into adulthood. Moreover, our sample was not recruited based on participants having extreme levels of CEM. Thus, reported associations between brain and mood with CEM cannot be explained by a selection bias and seem to be even present in people who experienced moderate levels of CEM. In addition to these strengths, our study also has limitations. CEM was retrospectively reported by the participants about their childhood, which makes it susceptible to response biases. However, studies suggest that underreporting CEM is more common than over-reporting (Maughan & Rutter, 1997), indicating that participants’ CEM levels in the current study are probably representative for, or on the lower end of, the level of CEM they were exposed to. Although results match well-established findings showing that people who experienced CEM might be more self-conscious and have enhanced negative self-attributions (Alloy et al., 2006; Gibb, 2002; Talmon et al., 2021; van Harmelen et al., 2010), we did not ask participants to report on their self-views (e.g., self-disgust, self-compassion) in response to their own direct and averted gaze. Therefore, we cannot pinpoint which psychological processes may have driven the increased neural reactivity in vmPFC. Future studies might benefit from assessing self-cognitions to examine how they mediate people’s responses to their own gaze. Due to technical challenges of measuring eye gaze in the scanner we successfully collected gaze data from 48 of the 79 participants and therefore the results regarding participants gaze responses should be interpreted in the light of this reduced sample size. Lastly, given that prior studies have shown unique effects of emotional abuse and emotional neglect on individuals social and emotional functioning (Milojevich et al., 2019; Warmingham et al., 2019), it is of interest
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