Anxiety, not regulation tendency, predicts how individuals regulate in the laboratory: An exploratory comparison of self-report and psychophysiology

Abstract

Individuals with higher anxiety tend to suppress negative emotion and individuals with lower anxiety tend to cognitively reframe (reappraise) negative emotion. However, most research studying these individual differences is based on self-report, but findings are not typically validated with biomarkers such as psychophysiology. We examined how self-reported anxiety and regulation tendency influenced how individuals naturally regulated emotion. Participants viewed negative images and were instructed to reappraise, suppress or naturally engage. Electrodermal and facial electromyography signals were recorded to compute a multivariate psychophysiological profile of how participants naturally regulated. Participants with high anxiety exhibited similar profiles when naturally regulating and following instructions to suppress, suggesting they naturally suppressed more. Participants with low anxiety exhibited similar profiles when naturally regulating and following instructions to reappraise, suggesting they naturally reappraised more. Participants did not report regulating in ways that aligned to their psychophysiology, suggesting that anxiety is a better indicator of regulation style.