A Study On The Implicit Attitudes To Emotion Regulation And Strategic Choice Preferences Of College Students With Social Anxiety

The classic Heimberg’ social anxiety model emphasizes the emotional regulation deficits of social anxiety groups.In the process of emotion regulation,the implicit attitude of emotion regulation and the choice of emotion regulation strategy have a great influence on the process of individual emotion regulation,and the attitude towards emotion regulation is related to people’s tendency to choose emotion regulation strategy.Because college students are the main affected group of social anxiety,the in-depth discussion on the two core issues of implicit attitudes to emotional regulation and emotional regulation strategy selection has important practical significance for preventing and intervening in the emotional regulation of social anxiety of college students.This study contains two experiments:Research 1 used the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Questionnaire to screen 54 college students with high and low social anxiety from a university in Jiangxi,and used the Emotion Modulation Implicit Association Test(ER-IAT)to explore the differences in implicit attitudes towards emotion regulation among college students with high and low social anxiety.A two-factor test room design of 2(group: high and low social anxiety)× 2(gender: male,female)was adopted.The results of the study found that:(1)There are significant differences in the implicit attitude of emotional regulation among college students with high and low social anxiety.College students with high social anxiety have a negative implicit attitude towards emotion regulation,while college students with low social anxiety have a positive implicit attitude towards emotional regulation.(2)There are no significant differences in the implicit attitudes of emotion regulation among college students of different genders.Research 2 used the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Questionnaire to screen 67 college students with high and low social anxiety from a university in Jiangxi,and used emotion regulation strategy selection tasks to explore the differences in social anxiety college students’ preference for expressive suppression and cognitive reappraisal strategies and the effect of regulation.A three-factor mixed design of 2(group: high,low social anxiety)× 2(picture type: negative face picture,neutral physics picture)× 2(strategy:expressive suppression,cognitive reappraisal)is adopted.The results of the study found that:(1)Under negative facial stimuli,the frequency of high social anxiety college students actively choosing expressive suppression strategies was higher than that of low social anxiety college students,and the emotional valence scores of using expressive suppression strategies were significantly lower than those using cognitive reappraisal strategies.Under neutral physical stimulation,there was no Significant differences.(2)Under negative emotional faces and neutral conditions,there is no significant difference between the valence scores of high social anxiety college students using expressive suppression and cognitive reappraisal strategies and low social anxiety college students.This study draws the following conclusions:(1)From the perspective of implicit attitudes to emotional regulation,college students with different levels of social anxiety have different implicit attitudes to emotional regulation,college students with high social anxiety have negative attitudes to emotional regulation,and there is no difference in implicit attitudes of emotional regulation among college students of different genders.(2)From the perspective of strategy choice preference,college students with high social anxiety tend to use expressive suppression strategies to regulate emotions when facing negative facial stimuli.(3)From the point of view of the effect of strategy adjustment,the adjustment effect of expressive suppression strategy is not as good as cognitive reappraisal,but the effect of using emotion adjustment strategy of high-low social anxiety college students is equivalent.