Rethinking butterflies: The affective, physiological, and performance effects of reappraising arousal during social evaluation.

Abstract

This study examined the effects of reappraising stress arousal on affective displays, physiological responses, and social performance during an evaluative situation. Participants were sampled from across the social anxiety spectrum and instructed to reappraise arousal as beneficial or received no instructions. Independent raters coded affective displays, nonverbal signaling, and speech performance. Saliva samples collected at baseline and after evaluation were assayed for salivary alpha-amylase (sAA), a protein that indexes sympathetic activation. Arousal reappraisal participants exhibited less shame and anxiety, less avoidant nonverbal signaling, and performed marginally better than no instruction controls. Reappraisal participants also exhibited increased levels of sAA and increased appraisals of coping resources compared with controls. Furthermore, stress appraisals mediated relationships between reappraisal and affective displays. This research indicates that reframing stress arousal can improve behavioral displays of affect during evaluative situations via altering cognitive appraisals.

How to Improve Adolescent Stress Responses

“…A power analysis based on an average effect size ( d =.66) from similar social-situational intervention research in laboratory settings using standardized social stress induction paradigms led to a targeted sample of 30 participants per condition (Beltzer, Nock, Peters, & Jamieson, 2014; Jamieson et al, 2010; Jamieson, Nock, & Mendes, 2012; Jamieson, Nock, et al, 2013; John-Henderson, Rheinschmidt, & Mendoza-Denton, 2015). A total of N =60 high school students were recruited from the Rochester, NY area using posted flyers and study information distributed by peers/teachers.…”

“…As is common practice with research using this scale (see Beltzer et al, 2014), composites of situational demands (e.g., “this situation is demanding”) and personal resources (e.g., “I have the abilities to perform well”) were computed at each time point ( αs > .80; see SOM-R for additional details).…”

“…Two independent coders blind to condition assignment and hypotheses coded video recordings of speech and mental math tasks using a coding scheme implemented previously in the BPS literature to index affective responses and speech performance (see Beltzer et al, 2014) Inter-rater reliability was good ( r = .91). Raters provided a joint score when necessary.…”

Adaptive Appraisals of Anxiety Moderate the Association between Cortisol Reactivity and Performance in Salary Negotiations

“…In addition, there are studies showing that appraisals of the experience of stress can influence performance. Emotion regulation research highlights that reappraising the experience of stress, by reinterpreting the situation one is facing, can promote adaptive responses to high arousal states [24, 25]. For example, participants instructed to think about their physiological responses to anxiety as beneficial to performance during a Graduate Records Examination (GRE) test exhibited elevated SNS responses and performed better on the GRE relative to control participants [4].…”

“…For example, participants instructed to think about their physiological responses to anxiety as beneficial to performance during a Graduate Records Examination (GRE) test exhibited elevated SNS responses and performed better on the GRE relative to control participants [4]. Other studies have replicated and extended this effect to show that interventions instructing participants to reappraise heightened physiological responses to stress as beneficial led to more approach-oriented behavior, more adaptive physiological responses, and improved performance, relative to instructions to reappraise arousal as harmful or control conditions with no interventions [24, 26, 27]. These findings demonstrate that physiological responses, coupled with adaptive appraisals, may be advantageous for performance.…”