关键词: 情绪调节发展, 情绪体验频率, 情绪能力, 情绪调节态度

Abstract:

Growing interest in emotion regulation is reflected in the studies of cognitive and social development. However, the extant studies mainly highlight how different emotion regulatory strategies contribute to their related developmental construct and ignore the development of emotion regulation itself. Recent studies suggest that change of emotion experience, emotional intelligence, and emotion regulation attitude could predict and explain the development of emotion regulation. Based on the framework of process model proposed by Gross and Levenson, our present study explored the contribution from emotion experience, emotional intelligence, and emotion regulation attitude to emotion regulation in a development scope. Also the adaptive functions of different emotion regulatory strategies were discussed. We adopted the longitudinal design and examined 569 junior students (Grade 6 and Grade 8 students from Shanghai junior middle school) at the first semester of the academic year. After ten month, we examined these students again. In the second phase of the study, 469 of 569 students (who became Grade 7 and Grade 9 students) participated the test. In each phase of the study, students completed the demographic information, Emotion Regulation Questionnaire, Daily Emotion Scale, Traits Meta-Mood Scale, and Emotional Attitude Questionnaire. There are several important results and conclusion, such as: Comparing with Phase 2, adolescents experienced more positive emotion, reported stronger up- and down-regulation attitude, and up-regulate their emotion habitually when encountering positive emotional episodes in Phase 1. Adolescents who reported higher changes of both positive and negative emotion experience would use more and more up-regulation during development. Nevertheless, comparing with the positive emotion experience, higher changes of down-regulation using were reported by the adolescents who experienced more negative emotion when growing up. Adolescents who reported higher developmental changes of emotional intelligence became increasingly possibly to choose down-regulation in both positive and negative episodes. However, comparing with positive emotion up-regulation, higher changes of negative emotion up-regulation were reported by adolescents of lower changes of emotional intelligence. Development of emotion experience, emotional intelligence, and emotion attitude were significant predictors of the changes of emotion regulation. Our development model showed that changes of emotion experience contributed to the change of emotion regulation directly or though the influencing of regulatory attitude and emotional intelligence development. Development of emotional intelligence and regulatory attitude predicted the changes of emotion regulation directly. Adolescents who presented a higher-change of emotional intelligence and more positive emotion experience (Positive Development Group) used more down-regulation when encountering both positive and negative emotional episodes in Phase 1. That is saying, down-regulation might be a more adaptive regulatory strategy in human development. This longitudinal study supports the proposition that changes of emotion experience, emotional intelligence, and emotional attitude were predictive of the development of emotion regulation. Regarding relations among emotion experience, emotional intelligence, emotional attitude, and emotion regulation, we would know that development of emotion regulation could be accounted for by degree of changes of these three constructs.

Key words: emotional regulation development, emotional experience, emotional intelligence, emotional regulation attitude