Abstract
Recently, research has provided support for a moderate, inverse relationship between social anxiety and dispositional positive affect. However, the dynamics of this relationship remain poorly understood. The present study evaluates whether certain personality traits and emotion regulation variables predict short-term positive affect for individuals with social anxiety disorder and healthy controls. Positive affect as measured by two self-report instruments was assessed before and after two tasks in which the participant conversed with either a friend or a romantic partner. Tests of models examining the hypothesized prospective predictors revealed that the paths did not differ significantly across diagnostic group and both groups showed the hypothesized patterns of endorsement for the emotion regulation variables. Further, a variable reflecting difficulty redirecting oneself when distressed prospectively predicted one measure of positive affect. Additional research is needed to explore further the role of emotion regulation strategies on positive emotions for individuals higher in social anxiety.
| Original language | English (US) |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 53-62 |
| Number of pages | 10 |
| Journal | Journal of Anxiety Disorders |
| Volume | 34 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Aug 1 2015 |
Funding
This research was supported by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health (grant number MH090308 ) to Thomas L. Rodebaugh and the National Institute of Health (grant number UL1 RR024992 ) to Washington University. The authors would like to thank the many research assistants who helped conduct this research, with particular thanks to Andrea Temkin and Marilyn Piccirillo.
Keywords
- Emotion regulation
- Extraversion
- Neuroticism
- Positive affect
- Social anxiety
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Psychiatry and Mental health
- Clinical Psychology