نبذة مختصرة : Anxiety disorder is one of the most common mental health problems but why some individuals stay resilient during stressful situations whilst for others anxiety becomes so severe that it significantly affects quality of life and socialisation, is unclear. Previous research suggests that emotion regulation and autonomic arousal play a vital role in explaining why experiencing stress and anxiety leads to the onset of anxiety disorders. Hence, this study aims to investigate the association between different emotion regulation strategies (positive vs negative), autonomic functioning (heart rate variability), anxiety symptoms, psychological wellbeing, and quality of life, in young adults from the general population in Malaysia. This study aims to recruit at least 100 participants. Participants will be required to complete questionnaires which measure demographic information, emotional dysregulation, use of emotion regulation strategies, anxiety, stress, and quality of life. Participants would subsequently have their heart rate recorded continuously during a resting-state period, a picture categorisation task and post-experiment resting period. The picture categorisation task will require participants to watch emotion-inducing pictures then rate its valence and arousal. We hypothesise that there will be an increase in autonomic reactivity and a reduction in autonomic regulation (indexed by reduced vagally mediated HRV measures), which is associated with increased emotional dysregulation, increased anxiety and stress, and reduced quality of life, in young adults. Another expected hypothesis is that young adults with higher levels of anxiety will be more prone to adopt negative emotion regulation strategies and will exhibit weaker arousal regulation (reflected in reduced HRV).
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