Stage 1 Registered Report: Does subjective intensity of stimulus-evoked emotional experience reflect emotional numbing in a non-clinical cohort with depersonalisation experiences?

Depersonalisation (DP) is often marked by damped emotional experiences. While some research investigated the physiological and neural correlates of emotional numbing in patients with DP disorder, the subjective experiential qualities of emotions such as the emotional intensity, evoked by external stimuli, remain largely unexplored in the general population exhibiting varying levels of DP severity. Previous studies were also limited in the diversity of emotional states assessed. To bridge these gaps, our study assesses DP experiences in a large online sample and investigates the relationship between the degree of emotional numbing in the DP symptoms and their intensity rating of their emotions elicited through short videos. In addition, we examine if subjective appraisals of emotional intensity are consistent across various emotion categories, which is covered broadly among the video stimulus set we will use. Thus, our study will offer a thorough examination of the nuances in different emotional experiences altered by depersonalisation.