Emotion regulation strategies and psychosocial well-being in adolescence

To study whether and how emotion regulation (EmR) strategies are associated with adolescents’ well-being, 633 Italian adolescents completed a survey that measured, using the emotion regulation questionnaire (ERQ), 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 and 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 EmR strategies, mirroring associations found in the adult population. The study results also suggest the need to further explore this relationship in adolescence.