Emotion Regulation and Social Adjustment in Adolescents and Adults: The Role of Suppression and Reappraisal

Abstract

Emotion regulation plays an important role in social interactions and outcomes. Although considerable research has shown that the ability to appropriately and adaptively regulate emotions is critical to psychosocial wellbeing, less research has looked more specifically at the role of particular emotion regulation strategies. This thesis investigated the role of two emotion regulation strategies, reappraisal and suppression, in social outcomes such as social support, friendship and family satisfaction, and involvement in bullying, with a primary focus on adolescents and first year university students. In line with research conducted predominantly in adult populations, it was expected that reappraisal would be related to better, and suppression to worse social outcomes in the adolescent and university participants. These predictions were investigated with a meta-analysis, a correlational study on university students, and a 2-part longitudinal study on younger adolescents (conducted 1 year apart). Negative relationships between suppression and social outcomes were more consistently found in the meta-analysis and concurrent studies, compared to the longitudinal studies. Reappraisal did not appear to be related to better (nor worse) social outcomes. The findings highlight that different emotion regulation strategies play varying roles in social outcomes, with the tendency to suppress emotions appearing to be particularly problematic socially. Psychological interventions encouraging greater expression of emotions are needed in adult populations. Future studies looking at the suppression of emotions elicited during adolescent social interactions are required to further investigate the immediate effects of this emotion regulation strategy in this younger population.