Social Anxiety and Emotion Regulation Processes in Romantic Relationships

Intimate relationship functioning and mental well-being are inherently linked; thus, for those with mental illness, such as social anxiety, intimate relationship functioning may be impaired. Research on the intimate relationships of those with social anxiety has often focused on emotion regulation, as emotions play a crucial role in the development and maintenance of interpersonal relationships and are a clear area of deficit among those with social anxiety. The current thesis had three primary aims: 1a) to examine individual emotion expressivity and 1b) interpersonal emotion regulation processes among individuals with varying levels of social anxiety; 2) to examine individual and interpersonal emotion regulation within romantic relationships; and, 3) to examine how individual emotion expressivity and interpersonal emotion regulation influence relationship health and intimacy among those with varying levels of social anxiety. For Aim 1, differences in individual emotion expressivity and interpersonal emotion regulation were analyzed using regression analyses with social anxiety as a continuous predictor. Analyses were also conducted using a dichotomous grouping (i.e., non-socially anxious and socially anxious) and conducting a multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA).

For Aim 2, the impact of individual and interpersonal emotion regulation processes on relationship health was examined using a series of regression analyses. Finally, Aim 3 was tested using structural equation modeling (SEM). Results suggest those with social anxiety show specific, but not general, deficits in individual emotion expressivity and interpersonal emotion regulation, and both individual and interpersonal emotion regulation had positive effects on relationship health. Regarding the primary analyses, interpersonal emotion regulation fully mediated the association between individual emotion expressivity and relationship health. Further, although the strength of these paths varied between groups, the valence and general pattern of these findings were similar for both those with social anxiety and those without. The study provided novel insights into the role of interpersonal emotion regulation in relationship health, and extended previous findings on emotion regulation and relationship health among those with social anxiety.