Expressive suppression is defined as the intentional reduction of the facial expression of an emotion. It is a component of emotion regulation.
Expressive suppression is a concept "based on individuals' emotion knowledge, which includes knowledge about the causes of emotion, about their bodily sensations and expressive behavior, and about the possible means of modifying them"Niedenthal, P. M., Ric, F., & Krauth-Gruber, S. (2006). Psychology of emotion: Interpersonal, experiential, and cognitive approaches (Chapter 5, Regulation of Emotions, pp. 155-194). New York, NY: Psychology Press. In other words, expressive suppression signifies the act of masking facial giveaways (see facial expression) to hide an underlying emotional state (see affect). Simply suppressing the facial expressions that accompany certain emotions can affect "the individual's experience of emotion" According to a 1974 study done by Kopel and Arkowitz, repressing the facial expressions associated with pain decreased the experience of pain in participants.Kopel, S. A., & Arkowitz, H. S. (1974). Role-playing as a source of self-observation and behavior change. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 29(5), 677-686. However, "there is little evidence that the suppression of spontaneous emotional expression leads to a decrease in emotional experience and physiological arousal apart from the manipulation of the pain expressions".
According to Gross and Levenson's 1993 study in which subjects watched a disgusting film while suppressing or not suppressing their expressions, suppression produced increased blinking.Gross, J. J., & Levenson, R. W. (1993). Emotional suppression: Physiology, self-report, and expressive behavior. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 64(6), 970-986. However, suppression also produced a decreased heart rate in participants and self-reports did not reflect that suppression affected the disgust experience. While it is unclear from Gross and Levenson's study whether suppression successfully diminishes the experience of emotions, it can be concluded that expressive suppression does not completely inhibit all facial movements and expressions (e.g. blinking of the eyes). Niedenthal argues that expressive suppression works to decrease the experience of positive emotions whereas it does not successfully decrease the experience of negative emotions.
It may be that expressive suppression serves more of a social purpose than it serves a purpose for the individual. In a study done by Kleck and colleagues in 1976, participants were told to suppress facial expressions of pain during the reception of electric shocks. Specifically, "in one study the subjects were induced to exaggerate or minimize their facial expressions to fool a supposed audience".Laird, J. D. (2007). Feelings: The perception of self. New York: Oxford University Press. This idea of covering up an internal experience in front of observers could be the true reason that expressive suppression is utilized in social situations. "In everyday life, suppression may serve to conform individuals' outward appearance to emotional norms in a given situation, and to facilitate social interaction". In this way, hiding negative emotions may cause more successful social relationships by preventing conflict, stifling the spread of negative emotions, and protecting an individual from negative judgments made by others.
Component Expressive suppression is a response-focused emotion regulation strategy. This strategy involves an individual voluntarily suppressing their outward emotional expressions. Expressive suppression has a direct relationship to our emotional experiences and is significant in communication studies. Individuals who suppress their emotions seek to control their actions and maintain a positive social image. Expressive suppression involves reducing facial expression and controlling positive and negative feelings of emotion. This type of emotion regulation strategy can have negative emotional and psychological effects on individuals. Emotional suppression reduces expressive behavior significantly. As many researchers have concluded, though emotional suppression decreases outward expressive emotions, it does not decrease our negative feelings and emotional arousal.
Different forms of emotional regulation affect our response trajectory of emotions. We target situations for regulation by the process of selecting the situations we are exposed to or by modifying the situation we are in. Emotion suppression relates to the behavioral component of emotion. Expressive suppression has physiological influences such as decreasing heart rate, increasing blood pressure, and increasing sympathetic activation.Dan-Glauser, E. S., & Gross, J. J. (2011). The temporal dynamics of two response-focused forms of emotion regulation: Experiential, expressive, and autonomic consequences. Psychophysiology, 48(9), 1309-1322. doi:10.1111/j.1469-8986.2011.01191.x
Expressive suppression requires self-control. We use self-control when handling our emotion-based expressions in public. It is believed that the use of expressive suppression has a negative connection with a human's well-being.Kühn S., Gallinat J., Brass M. (2011) Keep calm and carry on: Structural correlates of expressive suppression of emotions. PLoS ONE 6(1): e16569. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0016569 Expressive suppression has been found to occur late after the peripheral physiological response or emotion process is triggered. Künh et al. (2011) compare this strategy to vetoing actions. This type of emotion regulation strategy is considered a method that strongly resists various urges and voluntarily inhibits actions. Kühn et al. (2011) also posited the notion that expression suppression may be internally controlled and that emotional responses are targeted by suppression efforts.
One of the characteristics of expressive suppression, a response-based strategy, is that it occurs after an activated response. Larsen et al. (2013)Larsen, J. K., Vermulst, A. A., Geenen, R., van Middendorp, H., English, T., Gross, J. J., & Engels, R. E. (2013). Emotion regulation in adolescence: A prospective study of expressive suppression and depressive symptoms. Journal of Early Adolescence, 33(2), 184-200. doi:10.1177/0272431611432712> claim expressive suppression to be one of the less effective emotion regulation strategies. These researchers label expressive suppression as an inhibition of the behavioral display of emotion.
Externalizers vs. Internalizers Regarding emotion regulation, specifically expressive suppression, two groups can be characterized by their different response patterns. These two groups are labeled externalizers and internalizers. Internalizers generally "show more skin conductance deflections and greater heart rate acceleration than do externalizers" when attempting to suppress facial expressions during a potentially emotional event.Buck, R. (2003). Emotional expression, suppression, and control: Nonverbal communication in cultural context. Journal of Intercultural Communication Research, 32(1), 47-65." This signifies that internalizers can successfully employ expressive suppression while experiencing physiological arousal. However, when asked to describe their feelings, internalizers do not usually speak about themselves or specific feelings, which could be a sign of alexithymia. Alexithymia is defined as the inability to verbally explain an emotional experience or a feeling. Peter Sifneos first used this word in the realm of psychiatry in 1972 and it means "having no words for emotions".Muller, R. J. (2000). When a patient has no story to tell: Alexithymia. Psychiatric Times, 17(7), 1-6. http://homepages.spa.umn.edu/~larry/CLASS/NOTHING/READINGS/NoStorytoTell.pdf Those who can consistently suppress their facial expressions (e.g. internalizers) may be experiencing symptoms of alexithymia. On the other hand, externalizers employ less expressive suppression in response to emotional experiences or other external stimuli and do not usually struggle with alexithymia.
Gender differences Men and women do not equally utilize expressive suppression. Typically, men show less facial expression and employ more expressive suppression than women do. This behavior difference rooted in gender differences can be traced back to social norms that are taught to children at a young age. At a young age, boys are implicitly taught that having emotional reactions makes them weak, which is a lesson that encourages the suppression of emotional behavior in masculine individuals. This suppression is a result of "the punishment and consequent conditioned inhibition of all expression of a given emotion". If a masculine individual expresses an undesirable emotion and society responds by punishing that behavior, that masculine individual will learn to suppress the socially unacceptable behavior. On the other hand, feminine individuals do not experience the same societal pressure to the same extent to suppress their emotional expressions. Because feminine individuals are not as pressured to keep their emotions concealed, most do not feel the need to suppress them. However, there are exceptions.
Vs. display rules Complete expressive suppression means that no facial expressions are visible to exemplify a given emotion. However, display rules are examples of a controlled form of expression management and "involve the learned manipulation of facial expression to agree with cultural conventions and interpersonal expectations in the pursuit of tactical and/or strategic social ends" The utilization of display rules differs from expressive suppression because when display rules are enacted, the action to manage expression is voluntary, controlled, and incorporates certain types of expressive behavior. Conversely, expressive suppression is involuntary and is the result of social pressures that shape subconscious behaviors. It is not a controlled action nor does expressive suppression involve the manipulation of voluntary expressions, it is only manifested in the absence of expression. There are three ways in which facial expression displays may be influenced: modulation, qualification, and falsification. Modulation refers to the act of showing a different amount of expression than one feels. Qualification requires the addition of an extra (unfelt) emotional expression to the expression of felt emotion. Lastly, falsification has three separate components. Falsification incorporates expressing an unfelt emotion (simulation), expressing no emotion when an emotion is felt (neutralization), or concealing a felt emotion by expressing an unfelt emotion (masking).
A response-focused strategy Expressive suppression is an emotion management strategy that works to decrease positive emotional experiences. However, it has not been proven to reduce the experience of negative emotions. This strategy is a response-focused form of emotion regulation, which "refers to things we do once an emotion is underway and response tendencies have already been generated".Srivastava, S., Tamir, M., McGonigal, K. M., John, O. P., & Gross, J. J. (2009). The social costs of emotional suppression: A prospective study of the transition to college. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96(4), 883-897. doi:10.1037/a0014755 Response-focused strategies are generally not as successful as antecedent-focused regulation strategies, which refers to "things we do, either consciously or automatically, before emotion-response tendencies have become fully activated". Srivastava and colleagues performed a study in 2009 in which the effectiveness of students' use of expressive suppression was analyzed in the transition period between high school and college. This study concluded that "suppression is an antecedent of poor social functioning" in the domains of social support, closeness, and social satisfaction.
Psychological consequences