(PS3-13) Emotional Expressive Flexibility Differences as a Function of Neuroticism and Gender

Emotional expressive flexibility (EF) is the ability to adapt emotion expressions in response to specific aspects of social contexts by using different emotion regulation (ER) strategies (e.g., enhancement, concealment; Burton & Bonanno, 2016). The use of ER strategies may vary depending on whether the valence of the emotion is positive (e.g., happiness) or negative (e.g., anger). EF continues to develop from childhood through emerging adulthood and beyond but has not received much empirical attention. Deficits in the ability to flexibly regulate emotions are likely related to different levels of anxiety and depression symptoms. Given the potential importance of EF in transitional periods such as emerging adulthood, the current study examines whether EF differs depending on level of neuroticism and gender.

Participants were 341 university students (185 females, M_age = 19.23 years, 63% White) who completed the neuroticism scale of the Big Five Inventory-2 (BFI-2, Soto & John, 2017) and the Flexible Regulation of Emotional Expression (FREE; Burton & Bonanno, 2016) that provides an overall EF scale as well as suppression and enhancement scores for positive and negative emotions. From the BFI-2, using the mean ± 0.5 SD, three groups were created: low (n = 111), average (n = 94), and high (n = 136). An 3 (group) X 2 (gender) ANOVA revealed a significant group main effect for EF, F(2, 341) = 14.78, p</em> = .001, ηp²  = .08. Tukey’s HSD post-hoc analyses indicated that the high neurotic group differed significantly from the low and average neurotic groups who did not differ from each other. The high group had the lowest EF scores. There was a gender main effect, F(1, 341) = 12.27, p = .001, ηp²  = .04. in which women reported significantly more EF than men. There was no significant group x gender interaction.

 To determine whether this pattern of findings held as a function of emotional valence and type of ER strategy, a 3 (group) X 2 (gender) MANOVA was calculated for the enhancement and suppression scales for each positive and negative emotional valence. There was an overall group main effect, F(8, 662) = 3.88, p = .001, ηp²  = .05, in which significant effects emerged for all four scales. The high neurotic group had significantly lower enhancement of both positive and negative emotions than the low neurotic group with no significant difference for the average group. The high neurotic group suppressed positive emotion significantly more than the low neurotic group but not the average group. The high neurotic group suppressed negative emotion significantly more than the other two groups. There was an overall gender main effect, F(4, 332) = 10.52, p = .001, ηp²  = .11. Females enhanced both positive and negative emotions more than males, but there were no significant gender differences for suppression. There was no significant group x gender interaction.

 EF may be an important component to consider for individuals with internalizing difficulties, particularly the ability to enhance both positive and negative valence emotions, and to reduce the frequency of suppressing emotions. Research on ER needs to consider the flexible use of ER strategies within different social contexts as this appears related to neuroticism, although the direction of effects cannot be determined in this research.