Avoidance Associations with physiological Arousal in response to deep and shallow emotion processing

Abstract

Avoidance is a powerful risk factor for the development and maintenance of mental health disorders, but much remains to be learned about the specific underlying physiological processes that are implicated. Also, much remains to be learned how can experiential avoidance can be treaded or reduced. The current study examined the relationship between experiential avoidance and indexes of physiological arousal toward an emotional imagery task in different ways of processing emotional materials (deep Vs shallow). Sixty-nine participants performed an emotional imagery task experiment with affective (fear) and neutral stimuli, while autonomic arousal was measured. Participants had to complete processing trials, with shallow and deep instructions. Experiential avoidance was assessed through the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire (AAQ-II), whereas physiological arousal by indexes of heart rate and skin conductance. Also, alexithymia was used as a covariate on all analyses and was assessed by TAS20. Experiential avoidance was used as a continuous variable. No statistically significant results was found, but interesting observations were made. Firstly, were found no associations at all between experiential avoidance and heart rate and skin conductance during deep and shallow processing of fear and neutral stimuli. Experiential avoidance was only associated with alexithymia (positive correlation; as one increases the other also increases). Although findings were not significant, there was a tendency that the individuals with greater levels of experiential avoidance tended to use less skin conductance responses during deep processing of fear stimuli.