engleski

Gender effects in students' emotion regulation strategies and inter-personal emotion management

Studies on emotion regulation (ER) suggested that adequate self-regulation is important for well- being. E.g., strategies focused on antecedents of emotion seemed to show stronger relationships to positive well-being outcomes than strategies focused on suppressing emotions. However, the current views propose that successful ER is not determined simply by the specific strategies used, but rather by the flexibility in using them depending on context. Due to the vital role of socialization (often gender-biased) in ER development, some authors stress that gender differences in ER might be particularly prevalent in the context of flexible ER choice, but this question needs to be studied further. The other line of research found a certain level of consistency in people's propensity to use particular types of strategies in regulating their own emotions and the emotions of others. This study viewed this consistency as a potential indicator of lower ER flexibility. The aims were: 1) examining the levels of consistency in the tendency to use a particular type of strategies to regulate one's own and other people's emotions ; 2) exploring gender differences in the relationships between the intra-personal and inter-personal comparable ER strategies. We analyzed the responses of N=222 of students from different faculties (age: 18-27 ; M=22.6, SD=1.86 ; 55% females). Regulating one's own emotions was assessed using The Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (two subscales). The strategies in managing other people's emotions were assessed using The Interpersonal Emotion Management Scale (four subscales). The results showed low to moderate levels of consistency in ER: the intrapersonal antecedent- focused strategy was related to antecedent-focused (but not response-focused) interpersonal strategies (r=.23, p=.01 - r=.38, p<.001 for females ; r=.40, p<.001 - r=.59, p<.001 for males). Similarly, an intrapersonal response-focused strategy was related to interpersonal response- focused (but not antecedent-focused) strategies (r=.26, p=.003 in females, r=.35, p<.001 in males). Using Fisher's Z test to examine gender differences in correlations between intra- and interpersonal strategies, we did not detect significant gender effects on correlations between response-focused strategies. However, we found that intra- and interpersonal strategies of cognitive change were more strongly correlated in males (r=.58, p<.001) than females (r=.23, p<.001), and the difference were statistically significant (p=.002). That could be interpreted as less flexible ER in males, but at the same time, it might reflect a higher transfer of skills in applying the strategy that proved constructive and effective in a wide array of situations. In order to elucidate these different positions, and to address limitations of general tendency measures, we discuss the ways to incorporate context- sensitive elements together with contextually relevant well-being criteria in research designs for future studies.

emotion regulation strategies, interpersonal emotion management, consistency, flexibility in emotion regulation

nije evidentirano