Poster #216 - Links Between Emotional Expressive Suppression and Electrodermal Reactivity in Middle Childhood

• In Event: 1-061 - Poster Session 02
  In Poster Session: PS 02 Section - Social, Emotional, Personality

Integrative Statement

Background: A commonly used strategy for regulating emotions is known as expressive suppression (ES), in which a person attempts to conceal ongoing emotion-expressive behavior. ES has been frequently studied in adults and evidence indicates that it is linked to a host of negative health-related outcomes, including increased sympathetic nervous system activity, markers of inflammation, and higher cortisol reactivity (e.g., Appleton et al., 2011, 2013; Butler et al., 2003; Lam et al., 2009). Indeed, emotion regulation strategies such as ES contribute to an individual’s ability to regulate physiological responses to stressors; experimental studies with adults suggest suppression contributes to increased physiological reactivity in the moment (Butler et al., 2003), and correlational studies suggest that dispositional ES is also linked to greater physiological reactivity (Lam et al., 2009). The goal of the present study is to test the link between ES and physiological reactivity in middle childhood, given that relatively little is known about how ES may affect physiology in children. Investigating stress responding is especially important during childhood, because many physiological systems are still developing and an individual’s reactions to stressors during childhood at least partly determine stress responding later in life (Heim & Nemeroff, 2002).

Objective: The present study used a multi-method approach to investigate whether increased electrodermal reactivity in middle childhood was associated with: (a) dispositional expressive suppression, and (b) suppressing displays of emotion in a randomized experimental lab task.

Study Design. This study included 117 parents and their 9- to-11-year-old children. Before coming into the laboratory, children reported their dispositional ES using the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire for Children and Adolescents (ERQ-CA; Gullone & Taffe, 2012). During their visit, children were randomly assigned to suppress or not suppress outward displays of emotion while viewing a sad movie scene (Rice, Levine, & Pizarro, 2007; the movie scene successfully elicited sadness in both groups compared to baseline, p <.001). Continuous recordings of children’s electrodermal activity were collected before (while viewing neutrally affective pictures), during, and after the movie scene. Mean skin conductance levels (SCL) for each child were calculated for each period: during baseline, during the movie scene, and after the movie scene.

Results: Results indicated that, controlling for baseline SCL, increased SCL during the movie scene were associated with dispositional expressive suppression (b = .33, SE = .13, p = .013), but not with random assignment to the suppression condition during the movie scene (b = .18, SE = .20, p = .370).

Conclusions: The present study is partly consistent with previous research on adults’ ES and suggests that dispositional suppression in middle childhood is related to physiological arousal during a distressing event. These findings are also consistent with theory that children who often hide their emotions may find emotional situations stressful, perhaps because they have fewer strategies for coping with negative emotions (Shipman & Zeman, 2001). Results are discussed in terms of social baseline theory (Beckes & Coan, 2011) and the process model of emotion regulation (Gross, 2015); possible implications for children’s health are also considered.

Authors

• Jacquelyn Gross, University of Maryland, College Park
  Presenting Author

• Megan H Fitter, University of Maryland, College Park
  Non-Presenting Author

• Tamara Wilhite, University of Maryland, College Park
  Non-Presenting Author

• Jude Cassidy, Department of Psychology, University of Maryland-College Park
  Non-Presenting Author