"Social anxiety and emotion regulation flexibility : a daily diary appr" by Germaine Y. Q. TNG and Hwajin YANG
 

Social anxiety and emotion regulation flexibility : a daily diary approach

Publication Type

Journal Article

Publication Date

2-2024

Abstract

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 (N = 185, Mage = 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.

Keywords

Emotion regulation flexibility, Social anxiety, Emotional intensity, Experiential avoidance, Daily Diary

Discipline

Applied Behavior Analysis | Cognitive Psychology | Social and Behavioral Sciences

Research Areas

Psychology

Publication

Cognition and Emotion

Volume

38

Issue

2

First Page

199

Last Page

216

ISSN

0269-9931

Identifier

10.1080/02699931.2023.2279176

Publisher

Taylor and Francis Group

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2023.2279176

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