Emotion regulation strategies and psychosocial well-being in adolescence

To study whether and how emotion regulation strategies are associated with adolescents' well-being, 633 Italian adolescents completed a survey that measured, using the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ; Gross & John, 2003), the strategies of cognitive reappraisal (CR) and expressive suppression (ES), and their relationship with several well-being measures. Factor analysis and reliability results confirmed the validity of ERQ to assess adolescents' regulation strategies. Correlation and regression results showed that a greater reliance on CR was positively associated with better well-being outcomes for most indicators, especially Life satisfaction, Social support perception and Positive affect; greater preference for ES conversely was associated with lower well-being level for all indicators, including Psychological health, Emotional loneliness, and Negative affect. Neither gender nor age differences were observed for CR nor ES; CR and ES were positively correlated with each other. Both analysis of variance and regression results showed gender to be a significant factor for well being indicators (e.g., males' higher Positive affect and Life satisfaction than females'), whereas age was associated with differences in Psychological health only, with 16-year olds reporting the lowest health, and 14-year olds the highest. The findings overall show that adolescents' well-being is related to preferred emotion regulation strategies, mirroring associations found in the adult population. The study results also suggest the need to further explore this relationship in adolescence.