The Effect Of Reappraisal And Abdominal Breathing On Introverts And Extroverts Under Speaking Stress

The study was to explore how the two stress-coping methods, reappraisal and abdominal breathing, influenced heart rate and blood pressure (BP) and to explore what differences there were between introverts and extroverts. Seventy-two Hebei Normal University undergraduates took part in the experiment. There were thirty-six introverts and thirty-six extroverts. The number of boys and girls was equal. After matching, all subjects were divided into three equal groups, reappraisal group, abdominal breathing group and controlling group. In the study, we chose speaking as an experimental stressor and chose gender and character as medi-variables. Reappraisal and abdominal breathing were used in front-stress intervention, with between-group and within-group experimental design. The subjects' physical reactivity was recorded using some apparatus and computer in four phases. The result showed, in the phase of preparing, reappraisal could effectively reduce the extent of rise of extroverts' heart rate, systolic BP and diastolic BP, and it had significant difference with abdominal breathing. Introverts could effectively cope the increase of systolic BP and diastolic BP using reappraisal and its impact was obviously superior to the controlling group. Abdominal breathing could effectively cope the rise of introverts' heart rate, systolic BP and diastolic BP, and it had significant difference with the controlling group. In the phase of speaking, extroverts and introverts in reappraisal group could cope the rise of systolic BP and had significant difference with the subjects in controlling group. Abdominal breathing could reduce the rise of all subjects' heart rate and introverts' diastolic BP and it had significant difference with controlling group. In addition, the gender difference of individual physical reactivity varied in different physical indexes. The data of boys and girls could't be analyzed together when the gender difference was bigger in the baseline phase. When the difference was slight in the baseline phase, we could analyze using relative data. In general, both reappraisal and abdominal breathing could effectively cope stress, but reappraisal was better in the phase of preparing and abdominal breathing was better in...