Autonomic effects of cognitive reappraisal and acceptance in social anxiety: Evidence for common and distinct pathways for parasympathetic reactivity

Few studies investigated the effects of emotion regulation strategies on autonomic parameters in socially anxious individuals. We asked 99 socially anxious participants to give an impromptu speech in front of an audience in a virtual reality environment. In the anticipation phase, they practiced an emotion regulation strategy: negative functional reappraisal, acceptance, negative dysfunctional reappraisal. All strategies led to decreases in parasympathetic activity and increases in heart rate during anticipation. Parasympathetic activity remained low in the recovery phase, while heart rate increased, indicating a possible rebound effect of social performance. Exploratory moderation analysis revealed that for subjects with higher social anxiety, acceptance led to increased parasympathetic activity in the anticipation and recovery phases than negative functional reappraisal. Our results indicate that although globally parasympathetic reactivity seems to be a more general marker of simply attempting to regulate emotions, it could help distinguish between emotion regulation strategies for some participant subgroups.