The repressive coping style and fright reactions to mass media

Over the East 15 years, a number of studies in the mass communication liter ature have tested hypotheses about viewers' emotional reactions to frighten ing movies or TV programs. An assumption seems to be that self-reports of n egative emotion are adequate for testing hypotheses about emotional respons es. This study challenges that assumption in arguing for an alternative pos ition that self-report responses provide only a partial picture of emotiona l response. By including data on physiological arousal, a more complete and sometimes different view of emotional responses emerges. Participants were either repressors or nonrepressors. Consistent with research on the repres sive coping style, this study revealed that repressors who reported low lev els of negative affect in. response to a frightening film exhibited signifi cantly higher physiological arousal than did nonrepressors. These results s uggest that for repressors, low levels of self-reported negative affect may not provide a complete picture of their emotional experience. Implications and future directions for research are discussed.