Emotions and emotion regulation in undergraduate studying: examining students’ reports from a self-regulated learning perspective

Abstract

This study examined undergraduate students’ reports of emotions and emotion regulation during studying from a self-regulated learning (SRL) perspective. Participants were 111 university students enrolled in a first-year course designed to teach skills in SRL. Students reflected on their emotional experiences during goal-directed studying episodes at three times over the semester. Measures included self-evaluations of goal attainment, emotion intensity ratings and open-ended descriptions of emotion regulation strategies. Findings generally revealed that positive emotions were positive predictors and negative emotions were negative predictors of self-evaluations of goal attainment, although positive emotions were associated with larger changes in self-evaluations. Boredom was analysed separately and was found to be a positive predictor at the between-person level but not a predictor at the within-person level. Finally, students reported (a) enacting a variety of strategies to regulate their emotions and (b) using a different strategy more often than the same strategy from one study session to the next.