Is Awareness of Bodily Change in Emotion Related to Awareness of Other Bodily Processes?

Stephanie A. Shields, Angela Simon

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

15 Scopus citations

Abstract

To what extent is reported attentiveness to bodily responses in emotion predicted by a genera! disposition to be attentive to one's normal, nonemotive bodily processes; University undergraduates (373 women and 167 men) completed the modified Autonomic Perception Questionnaire (APQ-R; Mandler, Mandler, Uviller, 1958; Shields, 1984) for one of two target emotions, anger and transient anxiety, and the Body Awareness Questionnaire (BAQ; Shields, Mallory, & Simon, 1989), a measure of attentiveness to nonemotive bodily processes. In addition, the Body subscale, part of a Love Symptom Checklist concerning symptoms of romantic love was completed by 246 of these subjects. We predicted that the two measures of attentiveness to bodily response in emotion would be more strongly related to each other than to the BAQ, Significant low positive correlations between APQ-R and BAQ scores were obtained for each sex for both anger and anxiety. Correlations between the Body subscale and the APQ-R were high, positive, and significant, but correlations with the BAQ. were near zero. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses showed that of the three variables entered (subject sex, Body subscale scores, and BAQ scores), the greatest change in explained APQ-R variance was accounted for by the Body subscale scores. This pattern of results was replicated in a second study of 56 women and 42 men. Results are discussed with reference to detected arousal in emotion and beliefs about emotion symptoms.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)96-109
Number of pages14
JournalJournal of Personality Assessment
Volume57
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Aug 1991

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • Clinical Psychology
  • Psychiatry and Mental health
  • Health, Toxicology and Mutagenesis

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