Promote Youth's Healthy Psychological Development in new era: The Effect of Automatic Emotion Regulation Strategies on Stress Reaction of Trait Anxiety

Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2019, Vol. 42 ›› Issue (1) : 209-215.

PDF(720 KB)
PDF(720 KB)
Journal of Psychological Science ›› 2019, Vol. 42 ›› Issue (1) : 209-215.

Promote Youth's Healthy Psychological Development in new era: The Effect of Automatic Emotion Regulation Strategies on Stress Reaction of Trait Anxiety

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Abstract

A healthy population is the key mark of a prosperous nation and a strong country. With the growth of social and economic development, people’s living standards have been increasing, but the mental health problems have become the focus of public attention.Anxiety is one of the most common mental health problems in clinical practice today. Those who do not meet the criteria for clinical diagnosis but frequently suffer from anxiety are also worthy of attention.Trait anxiety refers to the tendency to assess internal stimuli or external events in a manner that causes anxiety. It is considered to be the susceptibility factor for individuals to experience more frequent, more intense anxiety and then pathological development. Previous studies have found that individuals with high trait anxiety have deficits in their ability to regulate their emotions. Automatic emotion regulation strategies help alleviate negative emotions that college students and anxious individuals experience from viewing images. However, there are few researches on the emotional response of trait anxiety adolescents in anxiety situation. All of us in the Party should care about young people and set the stage for them to excel. Therefore, this study adapted Trier Social Stress Test, to investigate the effect of cognitive reappraisal and expression suppression on the emotional stress of undergraduates with trait anxiety. This study utilized 3 (expression suppression, cognitive reappraisal, no strategies)×2 (high trait anxiety, low trait anxiety) between-subjects design. First, investigate 60 college students with high trait anxiety and low trait anxiety, and use Sentence Unscrambling Task to induce different emotion regulation strategies. Afterwards, participants receive an interview, finishing time-limited public speaking tasks and matrix calculations Task, and finally make a 1-9 rating of anxiety experience during the task. Biofeedback and physiological coherence autonomous balance systems were used to collect skin electrical level and finger vein changes during the interview. The results showed that there were significant differences in the rate of change of the skin electrical level and finger veins with different emotion regulation strategies. The rate of change of the skin electrical level and finger vein in cognitive reappraisal group was significantly higher than that in expression suppression and control group. There was no significant difference in the rate of change of skin electrical level and finger pulse between high-trait and low-trait anxiety groups. Anxiety arousal in high-trait anxiety group was significantly higher than that in low-trait anxiety group. There was no significant difference in state-anxiety scores between different groups of using different emotion regulation strategies. The above results show that different emotion regulation strategies have a significant effect on the emotional response of college students. Cognitive reappraisal strategies have the most obvious effects on emotion regulation. College students with different trait-anxiety tendency using different emotion regulation strategies would achieve same effect. This shows that the emotion regulation strategy is effective for the emotional regulation of individuals with different anxiety traits. In addition, trait anxiety may affect college students’ anxiety experience.The results show that cognitive reappraisal strategy for emotion regulation effect is the most effective, high trait anxiety individuals are more likely to experience stronger anxiety.

Key words

trait anxiety / automatic emotion regulation / stress / strategy

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Promote Youth's Healthy Psychological Development in new era: The Effect of Automatic Emotion Regulation Strategies on Stress Reaction of Trait Anxiety[J]. Journal of Psychological Science. 2019, 42(1): 209-215
PDF(720 KB)

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