The impact of emotion regulation on cardiovascular, neuroendocrine and psychological stress responses

• Cognitive reappraisal promoted cardiac vagal flexibility during and after acute stress. • Expressive suppression increased unpleasantness and cortisol reactivity to stress. • Suppression and not reappraisal enhanced control expectancies about the stressor. • Trait reappraisal moderated the efficacy of instructed reappraisal. • Trait suppression did not moderate the efficacy of instructed suppression. Emotion regulation (ER) is vital for healthy adaptation and influences how individuals respond to and recover from stress. We investigated whether ER improves cardiovascular, neuroendocrine and psychological stress responses, while taking into account the moderating role of habitual ER tendencies. Eighty-six women applied either cognitive reappraisal or expressive suppression (vs. control) while undergoing a stressor. Reappraisal decreased heart rate variability (HRV) during stress, but also initiated a stronger post-stress HRV-recovery relative to suppression. This reappraisal-induced cardiac-vagal-flexibility was particularly observed in habitual reappraisers. Furthermore, the reappraisal group reported enhanced positive affect, whereas the suppression group experienced more unpleasantness and expressed higher cortisol levels than controls. Heightened cortisol reactivity was also found in the reappraisal group, but only for individuals scoring low or mean on trait reappraisal. These results provide preliminary evidence that reappraisal fosters psychophysiological adaptation in response to stress, but also suggest that ER-strategy-efficacy critically depends on its habitual use.