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

摘要：

本研究使用追踪法考察情绪调节的发展及与其影响因素之间的关系，并对不同情绪调节策略在个体发展过程中的适应性进行探讨。对569位来自于上海地区的初中预备班和八年级学生进行测查，并于10个月之后进行第二次测查。 研究发现，随着个体的发展，其正性情绪体验逐渐减少，各种情绪调节态度的强烈程度均下降，情绪增强调节的使用呈递减趋势；情绪体验、情绪能力、情绪调节态度三者的变化在一定程度上能够预测情绪调节发展；在测试阶段一较多使用情绪减弱调节的青少年，在日后的发展过程中情绪能力提高的幅度较大且体验到更多正性情绪，说明了该策略在个体发展过程中具有更高的适应价值。

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