Arousal Reappraisal and Interoceptive Awareness: How Awareness of Bodily Changes Facilitates Heightened Performance and Ability to Reappraise

The physiological arousal induced by a stressful situation has historically been viewed as bad; however, recent research has challenged this perspective, arguing that stress-related arousal can be beneficial. Arousal reappraisal is a coping technique that encourages individuals to reinterpret their physiological stress response as a means to help improve performance. Conversely, suppression, a common, yet ineffective coping technique, involves the active effort to stop oneself from expressing an emotional behavior. The current research examined the relationship between coping techniques and interoceptive awareness (IA), the degree to which individuals are aware of their own physiological changes. Comparing arousal reappraisal to both suppression and a control condition, the current research measured physiological changes, as well as performance on tasks intended to induce stress, including a timed math subtraction task and a karaoke singing task, to determine whether individuals with high IA would benefit more from arousal reappraisal techniques. Hypothesis One predicted an interaction between the independent variables, with high IA individuals in the control and suppression conditions performing worse than their low IA counterparts and high IA individuals benefiting more from arousal reappraisal techniques than those with low IA. Hypothesis Two predicted a main effect of coping condition for physiological changes, specifically predicting that individuals in the suppression condition would experience increased levels of physiology when compared to individuals in the other conditions. The results of the study did not fully support either hypothesis. The results suggest that arousal reappraisal did not have a significant effect on performance during a stressful task and found IA to have no significant impact on participants' ability to benefit from reappraisal. However, the results did show a non-significant trend towards an interaction between IA and coping condition for performance on the mathematical stress task. This trend supports our prediction that suppression would hinder performance ability and continues to support the importance of the role of IA. Finally, there was a significant difference between baseline physiology and physiology during the two stress tasks, suggesting the tasks were an effective manipulation. However, physiology did not vary between the coping conditions. The results suggest the need for continued research on this topic. AROUSAL REAPPRAISAL & INTEROCEPTIVE AWARENESS 4 Arousal Reappraisal and Interoceptive Awareness: How Awareness of Bodily Changes Facilitates Heightened Performance and Ability to Reappraise Imagine yourself standing at the top of the high dive, looking at the cool water below, or walking up to a podium and looking out to a crowd as you ready yourself to give a speech. Now, imagine yourself stepping up to the plate with two outs in the bottom of the ninth, taking a timed exam for which you are unprepared, or sitting down for an interview at your dream job. How would you respond? Or rather, how would your body respond? If you were ill-prepared for any of the above scenarios, there would certainly be feelings of uncertainty and anxiousness accompanying a more deeply rooted physiological response as you approached the apex of the unfamiliar situation resulting in the all-too-familiar stress response. The current research focused on the concepts of arousal reappraisal and interoceptive awareness (IA), the degree to which an individual is aware of the changes in his or her physiological state (Craig, 2003). This study measured both physiological changes (heart rate and skin conductance), as well as performance on tasks intended to induce stress, with the goal of determining if individuals who are more aware of the physiological changes that occur during a stressful situation would benefit more from stress reappraisal techniques than those who are less aware of such changes.