The Relationship Between Early Life Adversity and Emotion Regulation in Different Dimensions: Sleep Quality as a Mediator

Abstract

Early Life Adversity (ELA) with negative effects on individuals emotional and physical health is related to individuals emotion regulation abilities. Exposure to ELA can lead to changes in peoples stress response system, affecting peoples behavioral and cognitive ability to respond to negative life events later in their lives. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between early life adversity and emotion regulation under the consideration of sleep quality to identify the extent of influences that different factors exert on emotion regulation strategies. An effective sample size of 424 participants was recruited for this study with an average low score on ELA. Results showed that early life adversity was related to an increase in the utilization of ineffective emotion regulation strategies in response to negative life events. More specifically, evidence pointed out that threats under the subcategories of ELA exerted a bigger influence than deprivation on individuals emotion regulation strategies. However, the mediation caused by sleep quality between the relationship of threat, deprivation, and emotion regulation needs to be noted. In this study, sleep quality mediated the relationship between deprivation and ineffective emotion regulation as well as the relationship between threat and effective emotion regulation. The differences in the influence level of different subcategories of ELA (threat and deprivation) on emotion regulation were represented as well. This study can encourage future studies to focus on the relationship between ELA and sleep quality, and the mediation of different factors in the relationship between ELA and emotion regulation.