Is lateralized reduction of EEG-alpha (as an indication of activation) attributable to positive versus negative affect (Davidson, 1992; Harmon-Jones, 2003) or to cognitive emotional coping activity (Rotenberg, 2004)? By manipulating affect and coping styles independently (e. g. in a 2 x 2 design) it would be possible to examine the relative contribution of affect and coping style separately. Empirical findings suggesting that the right hemisphere is associated with negative affect (Davidson, 1992) would alternatively be compatible with the right hemisphere’s capacity to support a parallel-holisitc mode of coping (i. e., self-confrontation in terms of relating an aversive event with the network of personal experience). Specifically, after inducing negative affect one can activate either holistic processing (combined with a self-evaluation task) or analytic processing (i. e. logical reasoning task). If the type of processing rather than affect is the crucial determinant of hemispheric asymmetry, negative affect should be associated with right hemisphere activation only when combined with holistic processing (and holistic coping attempts). Examples of holistic tasks that can be used for activating this capacity are coherence judgement tasks (Baumann & Kuhl, 2002; Bowden et al., 2005), summation priming (Beeman et al., 1994) or global-local tasks (Baumann & Kuhl, 2005).