Declines in Adaptive Emotion Regulation Beliefs and Strategies Across Middle School

• In Event: "Why Do I Feel This Way?" Recursive and Reinforcing Antecedents of Emotions in the Classroom

Abstract

Middle school is an emotionally and academically stressful time in students’ lives (Roeser, Eccles, & Sameroff, 2000), which corresponds to a decline in emotional well-being (Larson, Moneta, Richards, & Wilson, 2002). Students’ emotion regulation strategies may be partially responsible for this decline, as the strategies people choose can affect their well-being and social support (Gross & John, 2003). Furthermore, in order to utilize emotion regulation strategies, students must believe that there is a purpose for their emotion regulation efforts.

In the current research, we consider how emotion regulation use relates to two separable facets of emotion regulation beliefs: potency beliefs, that people have influence over their emotions currently, and malleability beliefs, that people can improve their emotion regulation efficacy over time. We test the hypothesis that students use less adaptive emotion regulation strategies and have less adaptive beliefs of emotion regulation across middle school, corresponding to previously found decreases in well-being.

Methods. Across ten middle schools in the United States, 2119 students (49% Female; Mean Age = 12.7 years) completed an online survey assessing their emotion regulation use and implicit theories of emotion regulation. These students were diverse in geographic location (e.g. CA, TX, HI, FL), socio-economic status (Mean free/reduced lunch status of schools ≈ 60%), and racial composition (32% White, 36% Hispanic, 13% Black, 19% Multiracial/Other).

We drew from the process model of emotion regulation (see Gross, 2008) to identify four adaptive regulation strategies used in response to negative emotions: distraction, reappraisal, accepting emotions, and asking for help. In addition, we identified two emotion regulation strategies related to negative social and emotional outcomes: rumination and suppression. Students reported the frequency they use each of these strategies. Students also reported their school and overall well-being, and their emotion regulation beliefs through four items adapted from Tamir, John, Srivastava, & Gross (2007).

Results. As expected, all four adaptive regulation strategies were positively correlated with school and overall well-being, whereas rumination was negatively correlated with school well-being. Suppression was not significantly correlated with either well-being measure as we hypothesized. Both facets of emotion regulation beliefs were also correlated with well-being.

Students in higher grade levels reported less adaptive strategy use: they accept their emotions less, ask for help less, ruminate more, and suppress more. These older students also report lower well-being and lower malleable beliefs, but show no difference in potency beliefs. These results indicate a cross-sectional decline in adaptive regulation strategies and beliefs corresponding to lower well-being.

Discussion. We present evidence that adaptive emotion regulation use and adaptive beliefs decline over middle school. By considering students’ emotion regulation beliefs, future research can gain a deeper understanding of why students use certain regulation strategies, and how this process affects well-being and academic success.

Authors

• Eric Smith, Stanford University

• Carissa Romero, Stanford University

• Brian Donovan, Stanford University

• Ihno Lee

• David Paunesku, Stanford University

• Rachel Herter, Stanford University

• Geoffrey L. Cohen, Stanford University

• Carol Dweck, Stanford University

• James J Gross, Stanford University