Emotion-specificity in emotion regulation: Links to psychosocial and academic functioning in early adolescence

Abstract

Despite the intimate links between the dysregulation of specific emotions and diagnosis of certain psychopathologies during adolescence, emotion specificity in adolescent emotion regulation remains under-explored. Adopting a person-centered approach, this study identifies profiles of perceived anger, sadness, and worry regulation, and examines how those profiles are related to academic and psychosocial functioning, with a large school sample of early adolescents (45 % female; 47 % male; 4 % non-binary; 31 % sixth grade; 31 % seventh grade; 37 % eighth grade) in the United States. Cluster sampling was conducted. Results from latent profile analysis indicate that a five-profile solution best fits the data: High emotion-general regulation (24.85 %); Average emotion-general regulation (28.57 %); Low emotion-general regulation (12.53 %); Low anger and sadness regulation (25.36 %); and Low worry regulation (8.70 %). Results from latent class modeling (BCH procedure) show that High emotion-general regulation profile has the best outcomes, while Low emotion-general regulation profile has the worst outcomes. Adolescents in the Low anger regulation and Low sadness regulation profile report low persistence and high self-handicapping. Adolescents in the Low worry regulation profile indicate low persistence and high disengagement. Furthermore, female adolescents are under-represented in both Average emotion-general and High emotion-general profiles. Practical implications for understanding and supporting emotion regulation among adolescent students are discussed.