Emotion regulation in social anxiety: a systematic investigation and meta-analysis using self-report, subjective, and event-related potentials measures

ABSTRACT

Recent models of social anxiety disorder emphasise the role of emotion dysregulation; however, the nature of the proposed impairment needs clarification. In a replication and extension framework, four studies (N = 193) examined whether individuals with social anxiety (HSAs) are impaired in using cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression. Self-reports and lab-based tasks of suppression and reappraisal were utilised among individuals with high and low levels of social anxiety. A meta-analysis of these studies indicated that, compared to controls, HSAs reported less frequent and effective use of reappraisal and more frequent and effective use of suppression. Counter to most models and our hypotheses, HSAs were more successful than controls in lab-based reappraisal of shame-arousing pictures as measured by subjective ratings, but not by event-related potentials. HSAs were less successful than controls in lab-based suppression of shame-arousing pictures as measured by subjective ratings, but not by event-related potentials. The results held even when participants were under social stress (impromptu speech anticipation). Overall, subjective reports of HSAs reveal strong deficits in emotion regulation whereas lab-based measures provided less conclusive evidence of such deficits. These results suggest that individuals with social anxiety experience difficulties implementing their reappraisal abilities in daily life.

KEYWORDS:

• Social anxiety
• emotion regulation
• cognitive reappraisal
• expressive suppression

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Shiri Lebendiger, and Maya Musafia for their help in data collection, Jason Moser and members of the clinical psychophysiology lab for their help in analyses of the ERP data and helpful comments on a previous version of the manuscript, and Isaac Fradkin for his helpful comments on a previous version of the manuscript. Preparation of this manuscript was supported by a grant from the Israel Foundation Trustees to the first author.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Yogev Kivity http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8293-8910

Jonathan D. Huppert http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0537-4701

Notes

1. A sample shame-arousing picture can be found at http://talkbusinessmagazine.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/shutterstock_11478448.jpg.

2. Correlations among social anxiety, self-reported emotion regulation and ratings of shame-arousing and neutral pictures were also examined and are included in the meta-analysis.

3. In the current studies we also administered the Social Interpretation Questionnaire-II (Huppert, unpublished) which is unrelated to emotion regulation and is not reported here. Additional information about this measure is available from the first author.