The more anxious, the less flexible? Association of trait anxiety with expressive flexibility and the mediating role of emotion regulation strategies

Expressive flexibility, the ability to enhance and suppress emotional expressions according to contexts, is essential for successful social interactions. While previous research has focused on the outcomes of expressive flexibility, which revealed that greater expressive flexibility was closely related to both psychopathology and mental well-being, little is known about the underlying mechanisms of individual differences in expressive flexibility. The present study investigated the association between trait anxiety and expressive flexibility, as well as the atemporal mediating effect of regulatory strategies, namely cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression, on this relationship. The sample consisted of 1122 Chinese college students (mean age = 19.97, SD = 2.25, 51.70% men). Results revealed that trait anxiety was negatively associated with both enhancement and suppression abilities of expressive flexibility. Furthermore, cognitive reappraisal atemporally mediated the association between trait anxiety and expressive flexibility, whereas expressive suppression failed to mediate these links. Surprisingly, expressive suppression was positively associated with enhancement and suppression abilities in Chinese participants. These findings suggest that a high level of trait anxiety might contribute to impaired expressive flexibility, highlighting cognitive reappraisal’s protective function in these interactions. Moreover, expressive suppression might be adaptive for expressive flexibility among young Chinese participants.