Emotion regulation strategies and psychosocial well-being in adolescence

Chiara Verzeletti,Vanda Lucia Zammuner,Cristina Galli,Sergio Agnoli,Cornelia Duregger

doi:10.1080/23311908.2016.1199294

Chiara Verzeletti, Vanda Lucia Zammuner + Show 3 more

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https://doi.org/10.1080/23311908.2016.1199294

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Journal: Cogent Psychology	Publication Date: Jul 4, 2016
Citations: 102	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: University of Padua

Abstract

AbstractTo study whether and how emotion regulation (EmR) strategies are associated with adolescents’ well-being, 633 Italian adolescents completed a survey that measured, using the emotion regulation questionnaire (ERQ), the strategies of cognitive reappraisal (CR) and expressive suppression (ES), and their relationship with several well-being measures. Factor analysis and reliability results confirmed the validity of ERQ to assess adolescents’ regulation strategies. Correlation and regression results showed that a greater reliance on CR was positively associated with better well-being outcomes for most indicators, especially life satisfaction, social support perception, and positive affect; greater preference for ES conversely was associated with lower well-being level for all indicators, including psychological health, emotional loneliness, and negative affect. Neither gender nor age differences were observed for CR and ES; CR and ES were positively correlated with each other. Both analysis of variance...

Highlights

The emotions we feel and express are very important for our psychosocial and physical well-being, e.g. they might promote goal achievement, facilitate interpersonal interactions, and guide behavior to enhance health promotion
The exploratory factor analysis, with normal Varimax rotation, that was performed on the emotion regulation questionnaire (ERQ) measure extracted two factors using the Kaiser criterion, accounting for 53.80% of the total variance
The six items for cognitive reappraisal (CR) loaded on factor 1 (30.88% variance; eigenvalue 3.30), and the four items for expressive suppression (ES) loaded on Factor 2 (2.92% variance; eigenvalue 2.08), with item factor loadings, for each factor, ranging from .60 to .79 for CR, and .65 to .70 for ES

Summary

Introduction

The emotions we feel and express are very important for our psychosocial and physical well-being, e.g. they might promote goal achievement, facilitate interpersonal interactions, and guide behavior to enhance health promotion. Felt emotions are not always functional, adaptive They might make us choose a socially inappropriate or risky course of action, or they might disrupt an important interpersonal bond. In such instances, regulating one’s emotions is necessary to appropriately respond to environmental demands (Aldao, Nolen-Hoeksema, & Schweizer, 2010; Gross, 2007; McLaughlin, Hatzenbuehler, Mennin, & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2011). Most recent reviews stress the complexity of the EmR costruct, its multidimensionality, and the need to consider its many facets, such as distinguishing between implicit and explicit processes in relation to goal accomplishment, or considering the effects on EmR of contextual variables, including culture, features of the eliciting situation, and individual characteristics, and analyzing the interactions among such facets (see Aldao, Sheppes, & Gross, 2015; Aldao & Tull, 2015; Ford & Mauss, 2015; Morris, Silk, Steinberg, Myers, & Robinson, 2007; Raver, 2004; Zeman, Cassano, Perry-Parrish, & Stegall, 2006)

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