A Study About The Influence And Mechanism Of Interpersonal Self-support Traits On The Process Of Emotion Reactivity

Personalities are associated with emotions. Previous studies showed that personalities involving emotional dispositions can affect the reactivity of the emotion stimuli. Interpersonal self-support traits are thought to involve emotional dispositions. Accordingly, interpersonal self-support traits can impact the process of emotion reactivity.Emotion regulation is another factors that can affect the process of emotion reactivity. Different emotion regulation strategies have differently consequences on emotion reactivity. Cognitive reappraisal and emotion suppression were investigated in present study. As we known, in most studies referring the two emotion regulation strategies, the specific strategy used in the experiments was determined by experimenters. Limited studies focused on the spontaneous emotion regulation strategies. And in those studies, spontaneous emotion regulation strategies have been found to have similar consequences with induced emotion regulation. Cognitive reappraisal can reduce the negative emotional experience, and has no effect on the sympathetic nervous system. Expression suppression has no effect on the negative emotional experience, but increase the activation of the sympathetic nervous system.The personality is considered as an influence factor on the usage and development of emotion regulation. Therefore, the hypothesis was suggested that interpersonal self-support traits may affect the use of spontaneous emotion regulation strategies.In summary, the mediation model is proposed that interpersonal self-support traits can affect the change of emotion reactivity through emotion regulation. As far as we know, there is no research to explore the relationships of personality, spontaneous emotion regulation strategies and the change of emotion reactivity. The following hypotheses were developed based on previous study. First, interpersonal self-support traits can affect emotion reactivity (hypothesis1). In the other words, interpersonal self-support traits can affect the experienced and physiological change of emotion reactivity induced by negative interpersonal events. Second, spontaneous emotion regulation strategies are mediators in the relation between interpersonal self-support traits and the change of emotion reactivity(hypothesis2).To explore the influence of interpersonal self-support traits on the emotional experience, negative emotions were induced by imagination of negative interpersonal events in study1. The results found that interpersonal independence and interpersonal openness are related to decrement of negative emotion which denoted the higher interpersonal independence and interpersonal openness were the more decrement of negative emotion faded. ANOVA analysis revealed that the interaction effect of interpersonal independence and interpersonal openness was significant. Further analysis revealed that in the group of low interpersonal independence the high interpersonal openness hold more decrement of negative emotion than the low one. The effect of imagination in inducing negative emotion was not so good. There may have some biases after deleting invalid participates.To explore the influence of interpersonal self-support traits on the physiological changes, negative emotions were induced by emotional film in study2. The results found that interpersonal independence and interpersonal openness were negatively related to increment of negative emotion during the film, interpersonal independence was negatively related to the decrement of finger pulse amplitude during the film, interpersonal flexibility was related to the decrement of finger temperature during the film, interpersonal openness was negatively related to the increment of HF-HRV during and after the film, spontaneous emotion suppression was related to decrement of finger temperature during the film and increment of finger temperature after the film and negatively related to decrement of finger pulse amplitude during the film. A path analysis via structural equation modeling was constructed and tested to explore the mediation effect of spontaneous emotion regulation. The final mode was obtained after deleting nonsignificant path one by one. The results showed that interpersonal independence predicted the use of cognitive reappraisal (p<0.001)and emotion suppression (p<0.01), interpersonal flexibility predicted the decrement of finger temperature during the film (p<0.05), emotion suppression predicted the decrement of finger temperature (p<0.01)and finger pulse amplitude (p<0.001) during the film. The bootstrap approach was adopted to test the indirect effort. The indirect effort of emotion were found between interpersonal independence and the decrement of finger temperature and finger pulse amplitude during the film.In conclusion, the results partly support the hypotheses. The results declare that interpersonal self-support trait can impact the processes of emotion reactivity, in the meantime, the mediation model make sense. To be noticed, the present study has failed to find relationship between cognitive reappraisal and emotion experience, and the relationship between emotion suppression and sympathetic nervous system is inconsistent with previous studies. Culture difference may help explain the results, but further studies are needed to test this theory.