School of Social Sciences, Management University, Singapore, SingaporeSingapore.
Cogn Emot. 2024 Mar;38(2):199-216. doi: 10.1080/02699931.2023.2279176. Epub 2024 Feb 6.
Previous research suggests that social anxiety symptoms are maintained and intensified by inflexible emotion regulation (ER). Therefore, we examined whether trait-level social anxiety moderates ER flexibility operationalised at both between-person (covariation between variability in emotional intensity and variability in strategy use across occasions) and within-person (associations between emotional intensity and strategy use on a given day) levels. In a sample of healthy college-aged adults ( = 185, = 21.89), we examined overall and emotion-specific intensities (shame, guilt, anxiety, anger, sadness) and regulatory strategies (i.e. experiential avoidance, expressive suppression, and rumination) in response to each day's most emotionally intense event over 6 days. During the study period, we found a positive association between variability in emotional intensity and variability of experiential avoidance in individuals with lower, rather than higher, levels of trait social anxiety after controlling for key covariates (i.e. gender, personality traits, and stress exposure). However, we did not find evidence for the moderating role of trait social anxiety in ER flexibility assessed at within-person levels. Our findings highlight the need to delineate dynamic ER flexibility across everyday events.
先前的研究表明，社交焦虑症状是由不灵活的情绪调节（ER）维持和加剧的。因此，我们研究了特质水平的社交焦虑是否调节了个体间（情绪强度变化和策略使用变化之间的协变）和个体内（特定一天的情绪强度和策略使用之间的关联）水平上的 ER 灵活性。在一个健康的大学生样本中（n=185，M=21.89），我们在 6 天内每天测量了最情绪化事件的整体和特定情绪强度（羞耻、内疚、焦虑、愤怒、悲伤）和调节策略（即体验回避、表达抑制和反刍）。在研究期间，我们发现，在控制了关键协变量（即性别、人格特质和压力暴露）后，特质社交焦虑水平较低的个体中，情绪强度变化与体验回避变化之间存在正相关，而在特质社交焦虑水平较高的个体中则不存在这种相关性。然而，我们没有发现特质社交焦虑在个体内水平上的 ER 灵活性调节作用的证据。我们的研究结果强调了需要在日常事件中描绘动态 ER 灵活性。
