Relationship between emotion regulation and psychological well-being : a cross-lagged study in Chinese migrant adolescents

• In Event: 2-127 - New Directions in Research on Culture and Emotion Regulation

Integrative Statement

Internal migration in mainland China is characterized by population flows from rural to urban areas, where individuals hope to find better living conditions. In recent years, migration has increased dramatically and around 35.81 million adolescents migrated with their parents to urban areas (Yiu, L., & Luo, Y, 2017). Comparing to non-migrant adolescents, migrant children tend to hold lower educational aspirations and are more likely to exhibit delays in adaptive functioning (Liu, X., & Zhao, J, 2016; Liu, X., & Shen, J. L,2010; Chen, L., Su, S., Li, X., & Lin, D,2014). An enormous amount of research had been devoted to investigating migrant adolescents’ social, emotional and behavioral problems, while relatively little attention has been paid to the positive developmental outcomes (Liu, X., Zhao, J., & Shen, J. L, 2013;). Psychological well-being, referring to cognitive and affective evaluations of our lives, is a significant indicator of positive youth development (Diener, 2009). Moreover, previous studies has established that the ability to manage emotions effectively is crucial to adolescent psychological well-being (Gross, 1998; Gross & John, 2003; Wu et al., 2013; Lee & Yoo, 2015). However, little is known about how different emotion regulation strategies work, especially among Chinese rural-to-urban migrant adolescents. To address this issue, this study aimed to examine the associations between specific emotion regulation strategies (i.e., reappraisal and suppression) and psychological well-being in Chinese migrant adolescents.
Three-wave longitudinal panel data were collected from self-reported questionnaires that were completed by 1567 students (261 migrant, M age T1= 13.61, SD=0.54; 45.5% girls; 1306 non-migrant, M age T1= 13.12, SD=0.42; 51.2% girls) from 13 junior high schools in Beijing. They were asked to complete the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire and Subjective Measures of Well-being. Given likely gender differences in these variables, key analyses were conducted in parallel for boys and girls. Results from cross-lagged analysis indicated that:
(1) There were no obvious correlations between suppression and psychological well-being in migrant adolescents.
(2) For migrant girls, interaction effects between reappraisal and psychological well-being were significant. Path models suggested that the use of reappraisal positively predicted psychological well-being in the following year. At the same time, psychological well-being also significantly predict reappraisal use in the subsequent year.
(3) For migrant boys, only higher psychological well-being significantly predicted more reappraisal use one year later, and reappraisal did not predict obvious changes in psychological well-being in the subsequent year.
These results suggested that different emotion strategies may have different impacts on psychological well-being in Chinese migrant adolescents. More specifically, reappraisal played a more important and interrelated role in migrant adolescent’s psychological well-being.

Authors

• Liuqing Jiang, Beijing Normal University
  Presenting Author

• Lichan Liang, Beijing Normal University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Yufang Bian, Beijing Normal University
  Non-Presenting Author