1-171 - Feeling, Flexibly: Flexibility in Child and Adolescent Emotion Regulation and Its Links with Psychosocial Functioning

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Particular emotion regulation strategies can be either adaptive or maladaptive, depending on specific emotions, intrapersonal or interpersonal goals, and social demands. Instead of a “one size fits all” approach, youth likely benefit from developing “flexibility” in the emotion regulation strategies they use across different situations. Along with managing both negative and positive internal feelings, children must learn to suppress, exaggerate, or even substitute emotional expressions to align with social expectations. Such flexibility is likely linked with both intrapersonal and interpersonal functioning.

This symposium addresses youth’s flexible emotion regulation and its associations with both psychological well-being and success in social relationships. These international, ethnically diverse studies utilize varied research paradigms to examine several potential conceptualizations of flexibility, including regulation of both subjective states and overt behavior.

Paper 1 is a person-centered study examining youths’ flexible regulation of negative internal states, linking emotion-specific versus rigid strategy use to well-being over time. Paper 2 is a peer-nomination study examining peer acceptance and the ability to inhibit pride expressions, even when such inhibition is discordant with perceived norms about age-mates’ pride inhibition. Paper 3 examines flexibility in both suppressing and enhancing observed emotional expressions, and links with peer relationship quality over time. Paper 4 is a psychophysiological experiment examining youth’s flexibility in purposefully mimicking or “counter-mimicking” peers’ facial expressions, and whether they modulate their performance in these tasks to fit their own social needs. Subsequent discussion will address various conceptualizations of regulatory flexibility, as well as important cultural and developmental considerations for future research.

Sub Unit

• Social, Emotional, Personality

Chair

• Skyler Hawk, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Individual Presentations

• Profiles of Adolescent Emotion Management Strategies by Emotion Type: Links to Internalizing Psychopathology - Presenting Author: Janice Zeman, William & Mary; Non-Presenting Author: Natalee Naomi Price, Miami University

• Gender and Age Differences in Peer Nominations and Perceptions of Pride Regulation in Black Youth and Links to Social Acceptance - Presenting Author: Lindsey Webb, Johns Hopkins University, School of Public Health; Non-Presenting Author: Scott Paul Mirabile, St. Mary's College of Maryland; Non-Presenting Author: Carisa Parrish, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine

• Flexible Emotional Expressiveness in Childhood and Adolescence: Longitudinal Links with Peer Relations - Presenting Author: Yingqian Wang, The Chinese University of Hong Kong; Non-Presenting Author: Skyler Hawk, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

• Early Adolescents’ Mimicry and Counter-Mimicry of Peers’ Angry and Happy Faces: Associations with Belongingness Needs - Presenting Author: Skyler Hawk, The Chinese University of Hong Kong; Non-Presenting Author: Yingqian Wang, The Chinese University of Hong Kong; Non-Presenting Author: Wenqing Zong, The Chinese University of Hong Kong