Continuous monitoring of affective-autonomic response dissociation in repressers during negative emotional stimulation

Earlier studies of repressorsʹ low affective but high autonomic stress responses could not rule out the possibility that self-reported low affect was a defensive post-stressor construction. In the present study affective-autonomic dissociation was continuously assessed during three negative emotional movie excerpts. Repressors had higher dissociation scores (high skin conductance but low subjective tenseness, monitored continuously) than non-repressors. The finding that repressive affective-autonomic dissociation actually occurs during emotion induction itself is discussed in terms of a systems theory of self-regulation and 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.