OBJECTIVES: Chronic psychological stress among college students increases sensitivity to negative emotional stimuli. Emotion regulation, a critical coping mechanism, draws upon cognitive resources and may impair subsequent cognitive control. Physical exercise has been proposed as an effective intervention to enhance both emotional and cognitive functioning. This study investigated whether a 12-week structured exercise intervention could modulate emotion regulation outcomes and improve cognitive control in college students experiencing high psychological stress. METHODS: Forty-seven college students, identified as highly stressed via the Chinese College Students Psychological Stress Scale, were randomly assigned to either an exercise group (n = 25) or a control group (n = 22). The exercise group participated in supervised rope-jumping sessions three times per week for 40 min, following ACSM guidelines, over 12 weeks. Before and after the intervention, participants completed tasks measuring two emotion regulation strategies-expressive suppression and cognitive reappraisal-and tasks assessing cognitive control. RESULTS: A significant group x time x strategy interaction emerged for subjective emotional valence: following the intervention, the exercise group reported attenuated negative valence under expressive suppression. For subjective arousal, post-intervention ratings decreased under suppression but increased under reappraisal in the exercise group, suggesting strategy-specific modulation by physical activity. Regarding cognitive control, electrophysiological measures revealed that the P3 component showed a significant interaction: the exercise group exhibited enhanced P3 amplitudes in congruent versus incongruent conditions after the intervention. Moreover, P3 interference scores were significantly reduced post-intervention in the exercise group compared to both its pre-intervention baseline and the control group. CONCLUSIONS: A 12-week aerobic exercise intervention enhanced emotion regulation outcomes and improved cognitive control under high psychological stress. These findings underscore the utility of physical exercise as a non-pharmacological approach to bolster cognitive-affective resilience in young adults.

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