Suppressing emotions toward stereotyped targets: The impact on willingness to engage in contact

This paper explores the effects of emotional suppression toward a stereotyped target as a function of the perceivers' prejudice. Heterosexual male participants watched a video of a gay couple with emotional suppression instructions or no instructions. Similar to the emotional regulation literature, low prejudice participants reported less positive emotion under emotional suppression compared to the control group. However, high prejudice participants reported more positive emotion under emotional suppression compared to the control group. These results suggest that high prejudice people were overcompensating in their emotional regulation attempts because of lesser regulation experience. Emotional suppression was also found to increase the desire for intergroup contact for those who were high in prejudice; positive emotion mediated this relationship. Possible benefits versus costs of emotional suppression toward stereotyped targets are discussed.