Expressive suppression strengthens coherence between arousal intensity and arousal interpretation

Interpretations of physiological arousal may be a key pathway connecting stress-related physiological arousal intensity to physiological and affective consequences of stress. Expressive suppression is linked to increased perceptions of stressors as threatening, which may exacerbate associations between physiological arousal intensity and interpretations of physiological arousal as debilitative. However, the effect of expressive suppression on the association between perceptions of physiological arousal intensity and interpretation remains untested. A sample of 224 undergraduate students completed two psychological acute stress tasks and rated the intensity of their perceived physiological arousal and whether they believed this physiological arousal to be facilitative or debilitative. Before the second stress task, half of the participants were randomly assigned to be instructed to engage in expressive suppression during the task; the remaining participants were instructed to not suppress their emotional expressions. Experimental group assignment moderated associations between physiological arousal intensity and interpretation. In the suppression group, within-person increases in physiological arousal intensity were more strongly associated with more debilitative physiological interpretations. The present study suggests that engaging in expressive suppression during stress causes increases in the intensity of perceived physiological arousal to be interpreted as more debilitating, with implications for stress-related anxiety.