CONTINUOUS MONITORING OF AFFECTIVE-AUTONOMIC RESPONSE DISSOCIATION INREPRESSORS DURING NEGATIVE EMOTIONAL STIMULATION

Earlier studies of repressors' low affective but high autonomic stress responses could not rule out the possibility that self-reported low a ffect was a defensive post-stressor construction. In the present study affective-autonomic dissociation was continuously assessed during thr ee negative emotional movie excerpts. Repressors had higher dissociati on scores (high skin conductance but low subjective tenseness, monitor ed continuously) than non-repressors. The finding that repressive affe ctive-autonomic dissociation actually occurs during emotion induction itself is discussed in terms of a systems theory of self-regulation an d health. Affective-autonomic response dissociation could be predicted by repression measured by the Defense Mechanism Inventory as well as by the, more conventional, combination of Marlowe Crowne-defensiveness and trait anxiety. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved .