LAUSR

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Response-focused emotion regulation (RF-ER) strategies may alter people's evoked emotions, influencing intrapersonal outcomes. Researchers have found that participants engaging in expressive suppression (ES; a RF-ER strategy) experience increased sympathetic nervous system arousal, affect, and lowered memory accuracy. It is unclear, however, whether all RF-ER strategies exert maladaptive effects. Expressive dissonance (ED; displaying an expression opposite from how one feels) is a RF-ER strategy, and likely considered "maladaptive". As outlined by the facial feedback hypothesis, however, smiling may increase positive emotion, suggesting it may be an adaptive strategy. We compared the effects of ED and ES to a control condition on psychophysiology, memory, and affect, to assess whether ED is an adaptive RF-ER strategy, relative to ES, in response to negative stimuli. We recruited women only to account for known gender-based differences in emotion regulation. METHODS We randomly assigned 144 women-identifying participants to engage in ED, ES, or to naturally observe, while viewing negative and arousing images. We recorded electrodermal activity and self-reported affect throughout and participants completed memory tasks after the picture task. RESULTS We ran a series of repeated measures and one-way ANOVAs and found no differences between groups across outcomes. LIMITATIONS The generalizability of our findings may be limited to young, undergraduate women. CONCLUSION Engaging in ES or ED may not differentially impact outcomes among young, undergraduate women, shedding doubt on a conclusion in past literature that specific strategies are categorically adaptive or maladaptive. Future research exploring RF-ER strategies among diverse populations is warranted.