The central importance of expressive suppression to posttraumatic stress symptoms: A network analysis

Emotion regulation plays a role in the development of posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS). Most research in this area has focused on how people regulate their emotions, a process called self-emotion regulation (self-ER). Self-ER strategies are well-established predictors of PTSS. However, people also regulate their emotions with the help of others, a process called social emotion regulation (social ER). Relative to self-ER, social ER is understudied, and its associations with PTSS and self-ER are unclear. Therefore, we used network analysis to examine the associations among self-ER, social ER, and PTSS. Adults with a history of direct trauma exposure (N = 1,061) reported their use of four social ER strategies (soothing, social modeling, perspective taking, and enhancing positive affect), two self-ER strategies (cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression), and PTSS. We identified ER nodes that had the largest bridge expected influence (EI) centrality with PTSS. Expressive suppression, a self-ER strategy, had the strongest bridge EI centrality in the network, followed by soothing and social modeling, both of which are social ER strategies. Although longitudinal research is needed to establish the direction of effects, these findings underscore the importance of evaluating the roles of both self and social ER in the development and maintenance of PTSS.