The Emotional Response Characteristics And Regulation Of Shy College Students In Stressful Situations

Shyness refers to the negative emotion and behavioral inhibition caused by an individual’s excessive self-consciousness or fear of being judged negatively by others.As a group about to enter the society,shy college students have to face the situation of fierce competition with others.However,their adaptability and expressiveness in such situations may be less than that of non-shy individuals,which leads to more negative emotions.So in which situations do they feel extreme inhibition?And are there good coping strategies to ease their emotional discomfort?This study focused on shy college students,study 1 aims to explore the difference in emotional responses of college students with high and low levels of shyness in different stress situations.Study 1 selected the cognitive stress situations and interpersonal stress situations that college students often face,and combined questionnaires and experiments to measure subjective emotional experience and objective Heart Rate Variability(HRV).High-Frequency(HF)HRV represents parasympathetic nerve activity,and the ratio of Low-Frequency to High-Frequency(LF/HF)represents sympathetic-parasympathetic nerve balance.On the basis of study1,study 2 focused on interpersonal stress task,aiming to explore the influence of different cognitive-evaluation emotional regulation strategies(challenge,threat)on the subjective emotional experience and physiological response of subjects with high shyness level in the Trier Social Stress Test(TSST).The results are as follows:(1)In the cognitive stress task,there was no significant difference in the subjective negative emotional experience and physiological response of the subjects with high or low levels of shyness.(2)In the interpersonal stress task,the subjective negative emotional experience of subjects with high shyness level was significantly higher than that with low shyness level.In terms of physiological response,HF of subjects with high shyness level was significantly lower than HF of subjects with low shyness level,indicating that subjects with high shyness level had stronger parasympathetic inhibition.TheLF/HF of subjects with high level of shyness was significantly higher than that of subjects with low level of shyness,indicating that the balance of sympathetic and parasympathetic nerves was higher.(3)In the interpersonal stress task,subjects with high shyness level using challenge cognitive evaluation emotion regulation strategy had significantly lower subjective negative emotions than subjects with high shyness level using threat cognitive evaluation.(4)In the interpersonal stress task,HF of the high-shyness subjects in the challenge group was significantly higher than that of the high-shyness subjects in the threat group,indicating that the parasympathetic inhibition of the high-shyness subjects in the challenge group was weak.The LF/HF of the high-shyness subjects in the challenge group was significantly lower than that of the high-shyness subjects in the threat group,indicating that the balance of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nerves was lower.This study found that subjects with high levels of shyness had specific emotional responses in stressful situations.The negative emotional experience and physiological responses in interpersonal stressful situations were significantly greater than those in cognitive stressful situations.In addition,challenge cognitive evaluation emotion regulation strategy can help alleviate the negative emotional experience of high shy subjects in the interpersonal stress situations.