Cognitive appraisals as precursors of emotion regulation: Investigating students’ responses to collaborative challenges

• In Event: A Comprehensive Look at Emotion Formation and Regulation Across Different Contexts With Various Methodologies

Abstract

Introduction
University students are often required to engage in collaborative learning but can struggle with peer interactions. Socioemotional challenges can derail group productivity, making them crucial to understand and address (Näykki et al., 2017). To adaptively support students, educators need a better comprehension of the contextual factors influencing students' behaviors in collaborative situations. Understanding how emotions are generated and developed in groupwork is essential: at the cognitive level, emotions begin with individual appraisals, which are evaluations of events that influence emotional responses and subsequent regulation (Lobczowski, 2020).
Our research aims to explore how appraisals of socioemotional exchanges affect emotion formation and regulation within collaborative learning environments, addressing the following research questions:
1. How do students’ appraisals connect with different challenging scenarios?
2. How do appraisal profiles connect to regulation strategy use?
Methodology
Due to the limited space in the symposium proposal, the procedures of instrument development, data collection, and processing are presented in Figure 1. Moreover, here we will focus on appraisal profiles (i.e., RQ1). The full presentation will also detail the methods and results related to regulation. After all responses were coded for appraisals, to identify the pattern of students’ appraisals in times of teamwork challenges, a series of latent class analyses were conducted in Mplus, ranging from two to five profile-models. We evaluated the model fit using several criteria, such as AIC, BIC, Entropy, VLMR p-values, and the 5% rule of ratio (Table 2). A chi-square analysis was then employed to explore how the profile membership is linked to specific challenge types.
Results
According to the fit indices, the 4-profile model was optimal (see Figure 1); the prevalence of each appraisal profile in challenge subscales is presented in Table 4, and the chi-square analysis revealed 2(33) = 80.689, p < .001, indicating statistically significant differences in appraisal profiles between stimulus events. More specifically, students generate value-related appraisals (Profile 1) when they encounter challenges pertaining to conflicting interests, interactions, and relationships. Comparatively, students are more likely to generate situated appraisals (Profile 3) in face of challenges involving cognitive issues, or unequal participation, communication, interactions, relationships, or other commitments. Additionally, students tend to generate attribution, competence, and personal preference appraisals (Profile 2) when facing challenges involving communication and individual differences; while goal orientation and value appraisals (Profile 4) are more likely to form pertaining to challenges regarding conflicting interests. Again, in the final presentation, we will connect the four profiles to the students’ use of various individual- and group-level regulation strategies (c.f., Lobczowski et al., 2021; Webster & Hadwin, 2015).
Significance
Our preliminary results contribute to understanding the patterns of students’ appraisals when faced with specific collaborative challenges and subsequent regulation. Future research will aim to connect appraisals to the implication the emotions and employment of regulation strategies to establish a more comprehensive model of emotion information and regulation. Practically, the findings can help educators provide more guided support when helping students address these issues or assist in designing intervention approaches to augment students’ motivation in engaging in teamwork.

Authors

• Meiting Chen, McGill University

• Shasha Li, McGill University

• Clara (Fangshu) Peng, McGill University

• Nikki G. Lobczowski, McGill University