Emotion Regulation Strategies in European American and Hong Kong Chinese Middle School Children

Abstract

This study explored emotion regulation strategies in middle school European American (N = 54) and Hong Kong Chinese (N = 89) children. Children were presented with scenarios describing a fictitious girl/boy who encountered situations eliciting sadness, anger, and fear. Based on Gross’ theory (1998), the survey of emotion regulation strategies was designed to study children’s perceived effectiveness of emotion regulation strategies including deep breathing, positive distraction, situation avoidance, talking to someone, and experiential suppression. The results revealed that some strategies were universal across the two cultures and some were culture-specific. Both American and Chinese children considered situation avoidance the most effective in dealing with anger. They preferred to talk to somebody more when dealing with anger and sadness than with fear. American children considered deep breathing the most effective for anger; for Chinese children, it was the most effective for dealing with anger and fear. Regardless of emotion-eliciting situations, American children scored higher on positive distraction and talking to someone strategies. This study also investigated children’s explanations of the effectiveness of emotion regulation strategies.