Expressive Dissonance: When Emotional Inconsistency Arouses Dissonance

Smiling won't make you feel better, but it might make people like you more: Interpersonal and intrapersonal consequences of response-focused emotion regulation strategies

Emotion regulation (ER) is integral to well-being and relationship quality. Experimental studies tend to explore the intrapersonal effects of ER (i.e. impacts of ER on oneself) and leave out the interpersonal impacts (i.e. the bidirectional impact of ER on the regulator and partner). The ER strategy expressive suppression shows maladaptive interpersonal and intrapersonal consequences during distressing conversations. We aimed to explore whether other ER strategies that modify facial expressions (i.e. expressive dissonance) have similar consequences to suppressing emotional expressions. We randomly assigned 164 women participants to use expressive dissonance and expressive suppression or to naturally express emotions, while engaging in a conversation task with a confederate. We observed intrapersonal outcomes, including electrodermal activity and self-reported affect throughout the experiment, and memory performance after. Video coders unaware of the study goals assessed the conversation on interpersonal qualities (e.g. friendliness and likeability). There were no differences between conditions on intrapersonal outcomes. Participants engaging in expressive dissonance, however, were rated more positively, and participants in the expressive suppression condition were rated more negatively on interpersonal qualities, relative to the control condition. Although neither strategy appeared to impact the participant, intrapersonally, both notably influenced the observer's impression of the participant.

Smiling won't necessarily make you feel better: Response-focused emotion regulation strategies have little impact on cognitive, behavioural, physiological, and subjective outcomes

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

Response-focused emotion regulation (RF-ER) strategies may alter people's evoked emotions, influencing intrapersonal outcomes. Researchers have found that participants engaging in expressive suppression (ES; a RF-ER strategy) experience increased sympathetic nervous system arousal, affect, and lowered memory accuracy. It is unclear, however, whether all RF-ER strategies exert maladaptive effects. Expressive dissonance (ED; displaying an expression opposite from how one feels) is a RF-ER strategy, and likely considered "maladaptive". As outlined by the facial feedback hypothesis, however, smiling may increase positive emotion, suggesting it may be an adaptive strategy. We compared the effects of ED and ES to a control condition on psychophysiology, memory, and affect, to assess whether ED is an adaptive RF-ER strategy, relative to ES, in response to negative stimuli. We recruited women only to account for known gender-based differences in emotion regulation.

METHODS

We randomly assigned 144 women-identifying participants to engage in ED, ES, or to naturally observe, while viewing negative and arousing images. We recorded electrodermal activity and self-reported affect throughout and participants completed memory tasks after the picture task.

RESULTS

We ran a series of repeated measures and one-way ANOVAs and found no differences between groups across outcomes.

LIMITATIONS

The generalizability of our findings may be limited to young, undergraduate women.

CONCLUSION

Engaging in ES or ED may not differentially impact outcomes among young, undergraduate women, shedding doubt on a conclusion in past literature that specific strategies are categorically adaptive or maladaptive. Future research exploring RF-ER strategies among diverse populations is warranted.