The disjunction effect of emotion regulation strategy usage and choice preference: The moderating role of trait anxiety

Abstract: Adopting questionnaires to measure the usage of reappraisal and suppression, acceptance, venting, distraction strategies, and through the behavior experiment method to evaluate the strategy choice preference, this study aims to investigate college students on the emotion regulation strategy usage and choice preference if there is a separation phenomenon and trait anxiety in the role of the relationship.

In study 1, a series of emotion regulation questionnaires and GNAT paradigm were used to investigate the usage and choice preference of five emotion regulation strategies and the relationship between them. Seventy-five college students were randomly selected, and 67 valid data were obtained for analysis after excluding invalid questionnaire data and GNAT task data whose accuracy rate was less than 75%. In study 2, participants were assigned to the Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI-trait) and the top 27% and the bottom 27% of the participants were divided into the high trait anxiety group and the low trait anxiety group according to the score of the STAI-trait from high to low, and the influence of trait anxiety on the correlation between emotion regulation strategy usage and choice preference was investigated.

The results showed that: there were significant differences in the usage and choice preference of the five emotion regulation strategies among college students. Specifically, in the usage of strategies, the frequency of reappraisal and distraction strategies was significantly higher than that of suppression, acceptance and venting strategies, and there was no significant difference between reappraisal and distraction strategies, nor between suppression, acceptance and venting strategies. In terms of strategy choice preference, the choice preference degree of suppression and acceptance strategy is significantly superior to reappraisal and venting strategy, and distraction strategy is also significantly superior to reappraisal strategy. There is no significant correlation between the usage and choice preference of reappraisal, suppression, acceptance, and distraction strategies. However, there was a significant negative correlation between the usage and choice preference of venting strategy, showing no separation phenomenon. Further analysis showed that the usage of venting strategy had a significant regression coefficient on its choice preference. Trait anxiety did not affect the relationship between usage and choice preference of reappraisal, suppression, acceptance, distraction strategy, but affected the relationship between usage and choice preference of venting strategy. Specifically, with the increase of trait anxiety level, the negative correlation between the usage and choice preference of venting strategy decreases, and when the trait anxiety level is high, the venting strategy choice preference may be positively correlated with the venting strategy usage.

The present study revealed the usage and choice preference of reappraisal, suppression, acceptance and distraction strategies were separated, and trait anxiety did not affect the separation effect. However, trait anxiety affected the correlation between venting strategy usage and choice preference.