High trait anxiety adolescents have defects in deliberate down-regulation of emotion: reflected on physiological responses not subjective arousal

This study aimed to examine the actual effect of down-regulation on the emotional consequences in adolescents with trait anxiety. A total of 19 adolescents with high trait anxiety (HTA) and 19 with low trait anxiety (LTA) participated in the experiment. Participants were tested for their down-regulating emotion performance in the Reactivity and Regulation-Image Task. Participants’ real-time physiological responses were recorded, and their emotional arousal consequence were also subjective evaluated. The effect of arousal on down-regulation of negative emotions in the HTA group was no significantly smaller than that of the LTA group. Meanwhile, the HTA group had significantly higher percent change in autonomic consequences than the LTA group during and after the task. This study suggests that adolescents with HTA could effectively down-regulate their emotional arousal. The impairment of deliberate emotion regulation of high trait anxious adolescents is not reflected in the arousal but in physiological responses, which may continue to exist after the end of the task. This study extends to actual “Online” emotion regulation, finding that HTA adolescents are sensitive on physiological level, helping explain some differences in previous findings, and provide theoretical support for future studies using physiological indicators or increasing regulation time.