Why expressive suppression does not pay? Cognitive costs of negative emotion suppression: The mediating role of subjective tense-arousal

Abstract

The aim of this paper was to contribute to a broader understanding of the cognitive consequences of expressive suppression. Specifically, we examined whether the deteriorating effect of expressive suppression on cognitive functioning is caused by tense arousal enhanced by suppression. Two experiments were performed in order to test this prediction. In both studies we tested the effect of expressive suppression on working memory, as measured with a backwards digit-span task (Study 1, N = 43) and anagram problem-solving task (Study 2, N = 60). In addition, in Study 2 we tested whether expressive suppression degrades memory of the events that emerged during the period of expressive suppression. Both studies were conducted in a similar design: Participants watched a film clip which evoked negative emotions (i.e. disgust in Study 1 and a combination of sadness and anxiety in Study 2) under the instruction to suppress those negative emotions or (in the control condition) to simply watch the film. The results of these experiments lead to three conclusions. First, the results reveal that expressive suppression degrades memory of the events that emerged during the period of expressive suppression and leads to poorer performance on working memory tasks, as measured with a backwards digit-span task and anagram problem-solving task. Second, the results indicate that expressive suppression leads to a significant increase in subjective tense arousal. Third, the results support our prediction that expressive suppression decreases cognitive performance through its effects on subjective tense arousal. The results of the Study 1 show that tense arousal activated during expressive suppression of disgust fully mediates the negative effect of suppression on working memory as measured with a backwards digit-span task. The results of Study 2 reveal that subjective tense arousal elicited while suppressing sadness and anxiety mediates both the effect of suppression on working memory - as measured with the anagram task - and memory of the events that occurred during the period of suppression.

Correlates of Cognitive Load in Surrogate Decision Makers of the Critically III

“…Unlike decision fatigue, use of expressive suppression was associated with higher levels of extraneous cognitive load. This finding is consistent with prior psychological literature reporting associations between suppressing emotion and working memory (Szczygieł & Maruszewski, 2015). In addition, Baumeister and colleagues (1998) report similar findings where individuals who were instructed to suppress their emotional responses to a video performed worse on tasks demanding working memory than those who were allowed to express their emotions.…”

“…Working memory, a finite cognitive process essential for information comprehension, can be modified by emotion regulation and decision making (Diamond, 2013). In laboratory studies by Baumeister et al (1998) and Szczygieł and Maruszewski (2015), expressive suppression was associated with impaired working memory performance on anagram and digit-span tasks. Alternatively, use of cognitive reappraisal is associated with enhanced or unchanged behavioral memory performance (Cutuli, 2014).…”

Daily Assessment of Executive Functioning and Expressive Suppression Predict Daily Functioning among Community-Dwelling Older Adults

“…Additionally, while cognitive reappraisal dampens both the subjective experience of emotion and the concomitant physiologic arousal, ES accomplishes neither and may, at times, even heighten both (e.g., John & Gross, 2004;Li et al, 2017). Importantly, excessive recent engagement in ES can temporarily impact subsequent EF performance (e.g., Baumeister, 2002;Baumeister, Schmeichel, & Vohs, 2007;Szczygieł & Maruszewski, 2015), but does not seem to impact other cognitive domains, as evidenced by experimental (e.g., Franchow & Suchy, 2017;Schmeichel, 2007) and correlational research (Franchow & Suchy, 2015;Niermeyer, Ziemnik, Franchow, Barron, & Suchy, 2019;Niermeyer & Suchy, 2020a, 2020bSuchy, Brothers, Mullen, & Niermeyer, 2020). Additionally, similar to the impact of sleep and pain on IADLs, self-reported recent burden of ES is associated with subsequent slower dual-task walking (Niermeyer & Suchy, 2020b) and less accurate performance on subsequently-administered office-based IADL tasks .…”

Examining Facets of Mindfulness in the Relationship Between Invalidating Childhood Environments and Emotion Regulation

“…Expressive suppression, however, which involves suppressing or reducing the expression of emotion, is generally ineffective in reducing affective distress when used habitually (Kalokerinos et al., 2015). Expressive suppression does not change the internal experience of emotion (Cutuli, 2014) and may increase physiological arousal (Szczygieł & Maruszewski, 2015), and because emotions are not shared, use of expressive suppression also tends to be associated with weaker interpersonal relationships (Srivastava et al., 2009). Use of expressive suppression in an invalidating environment may have immediate benefits, as refraining from sharing emotions may help a person avoid subsequent emotion invalidation (Zielinski & Veilleux, 2018).…”