Abstract
Adaptive and maladaptive emotion regulation (ER) strategies have been found to be important prerequisites of children’s social competence and psychosocial adjustment. However, only a few studies have been conducted to examine their interactional impact on children’s psychosocial adjustment. We collected multiple informant questionnaire data from N = 608 adolescents (10 - 14 years) and their parents in order to examine the prevalence of adolescents’ anger regulation profiles by means of latent profile analysis (LPA) as a sophisticated person-centered method. Overall, LPA identified four corresponding anger regulation profiles for adolescents (self-report) and parents (other-report). Furthermore, the different anger regulation profiles were found to be divergently related to internalizing and externalizing problems and prosocial behavior. Our findings support the assumption that specific kinds of psychopathology might be characterized by a different interplay of adaptive and maladaptive ER strategies. Possible reasons and practical implications are discussed.
Highlights
The experience of emotions represents an evolutionary tool that helps us to understand the world in general
With respect to child report latent profile analysis (LPA), the Bayesian information criterion (BIC) value and the Bootstrap Likelihood Ratio Test (BLRT) criterion indicated the best fit for the two class solution, whereas classification accuracy was inacceptable for this solution (.50) and clearly better for the three, four, five, and six class solutions
Bayesian information criterion values were better for the three class solution than for the four and five class solution, but Akaike information criterion (AIC) values were better for the four and the five class solution
Summary
The experience of emotions represents an evolutionary tool that helps us to understand the world in general. Are Profiles of Adaptive and Maladaptive Anger Regulation Differently Related to Adjustment in Early Adolescence? Whereas children’s and adolescents’ use of several adaptive and maladaptive ER strategies (e.g., acceptance, rumination) has been related to their psychological development and adjustment (Adrian, Zeman, & Veits, 2011; Eisenberg, Spinrad, & Eggum, 2010; Southam-Gerow & Kendall, 2002), less research has been conducted on the interplay between adaptive and maladaptive ER strategies (for an exception, see Aldao & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2012). Little is known about how children and adolescents organize these different types of strategies within their own individual ER profile. Given recommendations to examine discrete emotions rather than to examine general positive or negative affect (Zeman, Klimes-Dougan, Cassano, & Adrian, 2007), we focus on the regulation of anger as a specific emotion in this article
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