Since from the earliest months of birth up to old age, emotions characterize humans¿ everyday life, affecting their actions, behaviors and thoughts. A recent study demonstrated that both adolescents and young adults experienced at last one emotion 90% of the time. However, people differently face with the same emotion cues, with the result of engaging in a different set of response involving physiological, experiential and behavioral systems. How people react to emotion-eliciting situations has received a huge attention in the last years, emphasizing the role played by emotion regulation strategies on different aspect of health, social and adaptive functioning. At the same time, theoretical speculation corroborating by empirical researches has suggested that personal beliefs on the one¿s own ability to manage positive and negative emotions ¿ namely emotional self-efficacy ¿ impact on the engagement in social behavioral problems.
The aim of the current research project is to provide insight on the complex interrelation between regulation and beliefs relating to emotions and maladjustment in middle adolescence. Specifically, the moderating role of emotional self-efficacy on the relation between emotion regulation strategies ¿ differentiating cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression ¿ and the engagement in externalizing and internalizing behavior, respectively, will be investigated. To do this aim, five hundred adolescents attending the first and the second grades of high schools will be enrolled in the study. Trough collective administration session at school, the participants will be required to fill out questionnaires dealing with the key variables of the research project.
The identification of mediators that may enhance, buffer or act as antagonist on social behavior problems in adolescence may be helpful to plan early interventions, thus appropriately contrasting negative outcomes in adulthood.
Emotions guide human behavior in everyday life (Meyer et al, 2012). Recently, Trampe et al. (2015), trough ecological momentary assessment, demonstrated that people with age ranging from 14 to 74 years experienced at last one emotion 90% of the time, with positive emotions (e.g. joy, love and satisfaction) prevailing on negative emotions (e.g. anxiety, sadness and disgust) and the co-occurrence on of at least one positive and one negative emotion. These results allowed the authors to conclude that ¿people¿s everyday life seems profoundly emotional¿ (Trampe et al., 2015, p. 1). The empirical literature has broadly dealt with the role of emotion regulation strategies in the development and maintaining of psychopathological symptoms and maladjustment (Colombo et al., 2019). In details, research has focused on 2 strategies: cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression. In this research project, these strategies will be taken into account, thus offering the opportunity not only to compare our result with those yielded by past studies but also to contribute at adding a novel understanding of the impact of emotion regulation strategies on maladjustment in middle adolescence.
At the same time, the role of emotional self-efficacy dealing with positive and negative emotions on the engagement in EB and IB will be investigated. Theoretical speculation has suggested that people with higher levels of emotional self-efficacy show a better social functioning and well-being compared to people with lower levels. However, only few studies have attempted to translate this theoretical speculation in empirical evidence, highlighting as lower levels of self-confidence in managing emotions, especially negative emotions, are associated with the engagement in behavior problems (Caprara et al., 2006; Murris et al., 2011; Nightingale et al., 2012). The results deriving from this research project would provide insight on the role that emotional self-efficacy plays on IB and EB in middle adolescence, a developmental phase that has received less attention compared to childhood, late adolescence and adulthood. Moreover, it is particularly relevant at the examined sample, considering the significance of behavior problems during adolescence for subsequent psychological and psychopathological development.
As a whole, maladjustment in adolescence, as conceptualized in EB and IB, has received a huge attention, but involving different variables, theories and models without incorporating them into a more comprehensive framework. Despite interesting, results from past studies about the impact of emotion regulation strategies and emotional self-efficacy on IB and EB did not allow us to understand their reciprocal influence. In particular, the understanding of complex interactions between emotion regulation strategies, emotional self-efficacy and maladjusted behaviors in adolescents represents the great challenge for researchers, today. The identification of mediators that may enhance, buffer or act as antagonist on IB and EB in adolescence may be helpful to plan early interventions, thus appropriately contrasting negative outcomes in adulthood.
From a translational point of view, the ability to regulate emotions and personal beliefs relating to them are key predictors of levels of hyperactivity, externalizing disorder, early peer aggression, risk taking behaviors and affiliation with risk-taking peers (e.g., Olson et al., 2011; Saxbe et al., 2015) in the transition from school age to adolescence. For this reason, the proposed project is supposed to have also a social and economic impact by the identification of vulnerability factors, ultimately informing novel or individualized early prevention programs to promote efficacious emotion regulation strategies, firstly cognitive reappraisal, and to enhance emotional self-efficacy towards positive and negative emotions in adolescents. Research that elucidates the mechanisms linking the emotion field to the development of risk factors for psychological and behavioral problems in adolescence is highly relevant in light of the associated costs and impact on the society. Scott et al. (2001) followed 142 individuals from adolescence to adulthood showing that by age 28, costs for individuals with externalizing disorder were 10.0 times higher than for those with no problems. Indeed, the ability to regulate behavior is a key determinant of academic achievement and future occupational success.