Date of Award
2015
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
Psychology
Committee Chair
Aurora Torres
Committee Member
Jodi Price
Committee Member
Jeffrey Neuschatz
Subject(s)
Expression, Interpersonal communication, Emotions, Visual perception
Abstract
Expressive suppression is a late-occurring emotion regulation strategy in which individuals suppress the expression of their emotional behavior. Suppression was hypothesized to negatively impact the recognition of facial expressions compared to a control condition and to increase sympathetic activity. Women completed a series of emotion recognition tasks under a neutral condition, with a music emotion induction, and with a music induction while suppressing their emotional expression, concluding each block by completing subjective ratings. Pulse amplitude reactivity, reaction time, and accuracy rate were other dependent variables. Suppression while listening to music resulted in the greatest reactivity. Furthermore, listening to music without suppression stemmed the highest reaction times. Finally, women less quickly recognized angry faces and more quickly recognized sad faces while suppressing their expressions than they had during the baseline condition. Suppression differentially affects perception of expressions and may be disrupted when an individual simultaneously completes an active task.
Recommended Citation
Baldwin, Cassandra, "Effects of expressive suppression on emotion recognition and cardiovascular and subjective reactivity" (2015). Theses. 160.
https://louis.uah.edu/uah-theses/160