Abstract des Autors

This study investigated whether any differences in habitual emotional suppression exist between long-term physical exercisers and non-exercisers in a sample of Chinese women. The hypothesis is that exercise experience is associated with improvements in habitual emotional suppression and flexible implementation of different emotion-regulating strategies in various contexts. Participants included 29 exercisers and 29 non-exercisers. We examined the effects of context (i.e. sports vs. life) on the process of automatic emotional regulation using subliminal priming and emotional picture-viewing tasks. The effect of regulation was estimated on the basis of self-reported valence and heart rate. In the life context, exercisers up-regulated positive emotion, whereas non-exercisers down-regulated positive emotion; In the sports context, both groups down-regulated positive emotion. These findings suggested that exercisers' emotional regulation was synchronized with contextual demands. The exercisers could alter habitual suppression to enhance positive emotions in the life context and had the flexibility to apply the appropriate strategy of emotional regulation in various contexts.