Emotional suppression: Physiology, self-report, and expressive behavior.

Abstract

This study examined the effects of emotional suppression, a form of emotion regulation denned as the conscious inhibition of emotional expressive behavior while emotionally aroused. Ss (43 men and 42 women) watched a short disgust-eliciting film while their behavioral, physiological, and subjective responses were recorded. Ss were told to watch the film (no suppression condition) or to watch the film while behaving "in such a way that a person watching you would not know you were feeling anything" (suppression condition). Suppression reduced expressive behavior and produced a mixed physiological state characterized by decreased somatic activity and decreased heart rate, along with increased blinking and indications of increased sympathetic nervous system activity (in other cardiovascular measures and in electrodermal responding). Suppression had no impact on the subjective experience of emotion. There were no sex differences in the effects of suppression.Little is known about what happens when people regulate their emotions. In this article, we investigate one kind of emotion regulation, namely, emotional suppression.

Cardiovascular costs of emotion suppression cross ethnic lines

“…Based on previous findings that Asian Americans, African Americans, and Latino Americans report using suppression more than European Americans (Gross & John, 2003), we hypothesized that African Americans, Chinese Americans, and Mexican Americans would be more successful than European Americans at suppressing emotional facial behavior (i.e., expressions of disgust) and would incur less attendant physiological cost (i.e., smaller increases in sympathetic activation). Suppression has not affected negative emotional experience in previous studies (Demaree, et al, 2006;Gross, 1998;Gross & Levenson, 1993, and we expected this to be true regardless of ethnicity.…”

“…Participants viewed two clips found in previous research to elicit disgust and to be well-suited for instructed emotion regulation tasks (Gross & Levenson, 1993, 1995Kunzmann et al, 2005). One clip showed the treatment of a burn victim (55 s) and the other clip showed a closeup view of the amputation of an arm (62 s).…”

“…Based on findings from previous research (Demaree, et al, 2006;Gross, 1998;Gross & Levenson, 1993, we expected that relative to no-suppression participants, participants in the suppression condition would show decreases in expressive behavior, increases in sympathetic activation of the cardiovascular system, and no change in subjective emotional experience. Based on previous findings that Asian Americans, African Americans, and Latino Americans report using suppression more than European Americans (Gross & John, 2003), we hypothesized that African Americans, Chinese Americans, and Mexican Americans would be more successful than European Americans at suppressing emotional facial behavior (i.e., expressions of disgust) and would incur less attendant physiological cost (i.e., smaller increases in sympathetic activation).…”

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AbstractPrevious research has shown that inhibiting emotion-expressive behavior (emotion suppression) leads to increased sympathetic activation of the cardiovascular system (Gross & Levenson, 1993). Ethnic differences have been reported in how frequently suppression is used as an emotion regulation strategy (Gross & John, 2003); however, it remains unknown whether there are ethnic differences in the physiological consequences of suppression.

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“…We used a well-established paradigm (Gross & Levenson, 1993) in which participants watch a disgust-eliciting film clip and are instructed either to simply watch the clip ("no-suppression") or to hide their behavior ("suppression"). This paradigm is advantageous because it evokes strong behavioral response tendencies (e.g., prototypical signs of disgust, such as wrinkling the nose and turning away), and suppressing these behaviors produces a clear pattern of physiological activation (Gross & Levenson, 1993Robinson & Demaree, 2007). Thus, we deemed it a good starting point for testing ethnic differences in suppression.…”