Extant research indicates that worry is associated with reduced working memory. It remains unclear, however, what mechanisms contribute to impaired performance in worriers. Critically, dopamine in the prefrontal cortex heavily influences the stability of mental representations during working memory tasks, yet no research has probed its role in associations between worry and working memory. To address this gap, the current study was designed to examine the moderating role of dopamine on the association between worry and working memory, using the catechol-o-methyltransferase (COMT) gene as a proxy for basal levels of dopamine. Across four assessments, we examined within- and between-person variation in worry and its interactive effects with COMT to predict working memory performance. Within-person variation in worry interacted with COMT to predict accuracy, such that higher worry across time predicted less accuracy for homozygous Val carriers but not Met carriers. Our findings demonstrate that basal dopamine plays an important role in how increases in worry across time for an individual negatively impact working memory performance.

Does silently talking to yourself in the third-person constitute a relatively effortless form of self control? We hypothesized that it does under the premise that third-person self-talk leads people to think about the self similar to how they think about others, which provides them with the psychological distance needed to facilitate self control. We tested this prediction by asking participants to reflect on feelings elicited by viewing aversive images (Study 1) and recalling negative autobiographical memories (Study 2) using either "I" or their name while measuring neural activity via ERPs (Study 1) and fMRI (Study 2). Study 1 demonstrated that third-person self-talk reduced an ERP marker of self-referential emotional reactivity (i.e., late positive potential) within the first second of viewing aversive images without enhancing an ERP marker of cognitive control (i.e., stimulus preceding negativity). Conceptually replicating these results, Study 2 demonstrated that third-person self-talk was linked with reduced levels of activation in an a priori defined fMRI marker of self-referential processing (i.e., medial prefrontal cortex) when participants reflected on negative memories without eliciting increased levels of activity in a priori defined fMRI markers of cognitive control. Together, these results suggest that third-person self-talk may constitute a relatively effortless form of self-control.