Effectiveness of emotion regulation intervention on fear of negative evaluation and emotion regulation in university students with social anxiety

BACKGROUND: This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of intervention based on emotion regulation on fear of negative evaluation and cognitive emotion regulation strategies in university students with social anxiety. METHODS: This was a quasi-experimental study with pretest-posttest design and a control group. The study population consisted of all university students with social anxiety in Islamic Azad University, Sari Branch, Sari, Iran during 2019. After screening, the sample consisted of 30 (15 for each group) university students with social anxiety that were selected by the voluntary method and randomly recruited to each of the groups. Then, the participants in the experimental group participated in 8 sessions of 90-minute intervention based on emotion regulation, while the control group did not receive any therapy. Instruments for gathering data were Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale-Short Form (Leary, 1983) and Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (Garnefski and Kraaij, 2009). Then, the data were analyzed using SPSS software and statistical tests such as multivariate analysis of covariance (MANCOVA). RESULTS: The intervention based on emotion regulation had significant impact on fear of negative evaluation and cognitive emotion regulation strategies in university students with social anxiety. CONCLUSION: Based on the findings of this study, intervention based on emotion regulation improves fear of negative evaluation and cognitive emotion regulation strategies in university students with social anxiety and could be used as an effective interventional method.