Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 10, 2025
08:09
Psychophysiological Assessment of the Effectiveness of Emotion Regulation Strategies in Childhood
Published on: February 11, 2017
11.5K
State and Trait Emotion Regulation Diversity in Social Anxiety
Katharine E Daniel1, Maria A Larrazabal1, Mehdi Boukhechba2
1Department of Psychology, University of Virginia.
Summary
Emotion regulation strategy diversity may indicate social anxiety severity. Higher diversity in avoidance strategies, both trait and state-level, is linked to greater social anxiety.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Clinical Psychology
- Social Psychology
Background:
- Emotion regulation (ER) diversity, encompassing the variety, frequency, and evenness of strategies used, is a potential predictor of social anxiety (SA) severity.
- Previous research has primarily focused on trait-level ER diversity, with limited exploration of its dynamic, state-level manifestations.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the relationship between trait and state-level emotion regulation diversity and social anxiety severity.
- To determine if specific patterns of ER diversity predict group membership in individuals with high versus low social anxiety.
- To examine the generalizability of ER diversity metrics from trait to state levels.
Main Methods:
- Utilized a sample of individuals with high (n=113) and low (n=42) social anxiety severity.
- Calculated four trait-level ER diversity metrics.
- Extended ER diversity calculations to repeated-measures data, analyzing two weeks of ecological momentary assessment (EMA) data for state-level metrics.
- Controlled for the number of submitted EMAs in state-level analyses.
Main Results:
- Higher trait ER diversity within avoidance-oriented strategies predicted a greater likelihood of belonging to the high SA severity group.
- State-level analyses revealed that higher diversity across all ER strategies, and within and between avoidance- and approach-oriented strategies, predicted higher SA severity, controlling for EMA submission count.
- A significant cross-level correlation was found only for diversity within avoidance-oriented strategies.
Conclusions:
- Findings suggest that a high diversity of avoidance-oriented emotion regulation strategies may be associated with increased social anxiety severity.
- The study highlights the potential clinical relevance of assessing both trait and state levels of ER diversity in understanding social anxiety.
- Further research is warranted to explore the causal mechanisms underlying the link between avoidance-focused ER diversity and social anxiety.
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