Repressors benefit from reappraising a threatening emotional event

Abstract

Background and Objectives: The malleability of emotion-focused coping was investigated by manipulating the situational context so that dispositional repressors, who typically utilize an avoidant strategy when confronted with a stressor, were led to use reappraisal and then were reexposed to the stressor. Design: A mixed design with one measured between-subjects factor (dispositional repression), two randomized between-subjects factors (performance feedback and coping strategy), and multimodal assessments across phases of the experiment was used. Method: During a face-perception task, participants (170 female and 120 male university students) received bogus performance feedback that was inconsistent with and thus threatening to self-concept. Participants then completed a writing activity encouraging them to perceive a face-perception task as either an invalid (reappraisal) or a valid (control) assessment tool. Afterward, participants continued with the task. Results: A repressive disposition was associated with a defense response (decreased perceived emotion to actors' expressions, increased skin conductance levels, and increased heart rates) during the face-perception task that participants perceived as threatening, but not during reexposure to the event after they had reappraised it as nonthreatening. Conclusions: This research provides a more detailed understanding of the dynamic nature of emotion-focused coping by exploring how the disposition-situation interaction affects self-regulation of emotion.

Keywords:

• dispositional repression
• avoidance
• reappraisal
• emotion regulation
• threat

Acknowledgment

I thank Elaine Bond for helpful comments and critical reading of drafts of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. This face-perception task and the affective and threatening nature of the situational context manipulation has been used in previous research. Evaluation data have demonstrated, for example, that all participants on average report (i) that it is at least moderately important for them to have good social perception skills, which in turn makes their performance during the face-perception task important and thus relevant to their self-concept; (ii) more positive and less negative affect when their performance was good (high score) rather than poor (low score), regardless of its relevance to their self-concept; (iii) more positive and less negative affect when either their good or poor performance was consistent rather than inconsistent with their self-concept, which suggests that they are sensitive rather than insensitive to people’s feelings; and (iv) that they are threatened by feedback concerning their ability to relate to others, regardless of whether their score was high or low (see Mendolia & Baker, 2008, and Mendolia, 1999, 2002, for further discussion and additional validation analyses). Thus, the face-perception task, which ostensibly reveals whether participants’ success or failure at the task is consistent or inconsistent with their self-concept, can successfully elicit a positive or a negative emotion to motivate repressive behavior.

Additional information

Funding

The research reported here was supported in part by National Institutes of Health [grant number MH58800].