Hidden feelings: Expressive suppression in middle childhood and links with physiology and negative emotion

A commonly used strategy for regulating emotions, expressive suppression (ES), involves attempts to conceal emotion-expressive behavior. The present study investigated the effects of two types of ES (trait and state) in middle childhood on two domains of functioning-subjective negative emotion (measured by self-report of sadness) and stress physiology (measured by skin conductance level [SCL], an indication of physiological arousal)-in a racially diverse sample. Children ages 9-10 (n = 117; 46% female) self-reported trait ES before coming into the lab, then were randomly assigned to receive instructions to suppress or receive no emotion regulation instructions (control condition) while watching a sad movie scene. SCL and self-reported emotions were measured before and during the movie scene, and children subsequently self-reported how much they had suppressed during the movie scene. Parents and children provided a wide range of additional measures as covariates. Data were collected from 2017 to 2018. Results from multiple regression analyses indicated that higher trait ES predicted greater SCL, but not subjective sadness, during the movie scene. The instructions to suppress did not affect children's subjective sadness or SCL during the movie scene, but self-reported (noninstructed) ES during the movie scene was related to feeling more sadness. Although additional research is needed to generalize findings to other developmental periods, results converge with considerable research on adults and also with a growing number of studies pointing to the potential physiological and emotional correlates of frequent ES during childhood. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).