Abstract

Cognitive reappraisal refers to changing how one thinks about a situation to alter its emotional impact. It is central to well-being 1 and engages prefrontal regulatory circuits 2 , prompting the assumption that their activity reflects a person’s capacity to regulate emotions 3 , 4 , 5 . Yet evidence for this assumption remains inconclusive and has not been established at scale. Here we analysed 40 task-based functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) datasets in a preregistered consortium with 2,175 participants and show that three widely used indicators of reappraisal capacity—trait questionnaires, task-based affective ratings and amygdala down-regulation—do not converge on a common core. Moreover, none of the three indicators showed the expected association with canonical prefrontal regulatory circuits. Trait questionnaires showed no detectable neural associations across the brain and task-based affective ratings were instead associated with responses in the amygdala and sensorimotor cortices.…