Emotion Regulation Strategies in European American and Hong Kong Chinese Middle School Children

Abstract

This study explored emotion regulation strategies in middle school European American (N=54) and Hong Kong Chinese (N=89) children. Children were presented with scenarios describing a fictitious girl/boy who encountered situations eliciting sadness, anger, and fear. Based on Gross' theory (1998), the survey of emotion regulation strategies was designed to study children's perceived effectiveness of emotion regulation strategies including deep breathing, positive distraction, situation avoidance, talking to someone, and experiential suppression. The results revealed that some strategies were universal across the two cultures and some were culturespecific. Both American and Chinese children considered situation avoidance the most effective in dealing with anger. They preferred to talk to somebody more when dealing with anger and sadness than with fear. American children considered deep breathing the most effective for anger; for Chinese children, it was the most effective for dealing with anger and fear. Regardless of emotion-eliciting situations, American children scored higher on positive distraction and talking to someone strategies. This study also investigated children's explanations of the effectiveness of emotion regulation strategies.

Children’s emotion regulation strategies in facing the Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous (VUCA) World: A systematic narrative review

“…In addition, a total of n=2 studies looked into the parental, caregivers, or environmental influence on the children's application of emotion regulation strategies (Liu et al 2019, Schoppmann et al 2022. Also, n=4 studies aimed to make a comparison of the usage of emotion regulation strategies among children with different age groups and in a different context of family, peers, school, and behaviours (Wan & Savina 2015, Lopesz-Perez et al 2016, Cai et al 2020, Wang & Barrett 2020.…”

“…However, not all articles had an even number of strategies, as few studies mentioned more than one strategy, while some studies interpreted the strategies by giving situational examples, explaining strategies sub-categories and even synonymous terms of the strategies. In correlation, n=10 articles focused on more than one strategy (Wan & Savina 2015, Lopez-Perez et al 2016, Rao & Gibson 2018, Parsafar et al 2019, Atkinson et al 2020, Cai et al 2020, Hipson et al 2019 Attachment assessment at two years has portrayed significant results even though it provides an indirect predictor of social regulation for children aged 10 to 12.…”

“…, Oeri & Roebers 2020, Wang & Barrett 2020 while the remaining n=3 articles highlighted only one out of five main strategies(Kao et al 2020, Oeri & Roebers 2020, Schoppmann et al 2020.Moreover, n=8 articles provided the strategies with situational examples(Lopez-Perez et al 2016, Rao & Gibson 2018, Hipson et al 2019, Atkinson et al 2020, Boldt et al 2020, Oeri & Roebers 2020, Schoppmann et al 2020, Wang & Barrett 2020. On the other hand, n=7 articles complemented the strategies explanation by adding on both sub-categories of strategies and examples(Wan & Savina 2015, Rao & Gibson 2018, Parsafar et al 2019, Atkinson et al 2020, Oeri & Roebers 2020, Schoppmann et al. 2020, Wang & Barrett 2020.The narrative review adaptsGross's (2013) emotion regulation process model.…”

“…In 2018, n=3 studies were retrieved(Rao & Gibson 2018, Hipson et al 2019, Liu et al 2019. In addition, a total of n=1 studies(Wan & Savina 2015, Lopez-Perez et al 2016, Parsafar et al 2019, Boldt et al 2020, Schoppmann et al 2022) each was identified in2015, 2016, 2019, 2021 and 2022. In line with the aim of the study, the methodologies of studies were presented in the form of a literature matrix.…”

Emotion Norms, Display Rules, and Regulation in the Akan Society of Ghana: An Exploration Using Proverbs

“…Due to cultural differences in the valuing and meaning of positive and negative emotions, Asians tend not to savor positive emotions, and are less likely to down-regulate negative emotion while European Americans prefer not to dampen positive emotions and are more likely to regulate emotion hedonically in experimental and experiential settings ( Miyamoto and Ma, 2011 ; Miyamoto et al, 2014 ). Wan and Savina (2015) compared preferred emotion regulation strategies in US and Hong Kong Chinese public school children. They observed that US children endorsed positive distraction and talking to someone to a greater extent than the comparison group, while Chinese (but not US) children endorsed deep breathing as a fear regulation strategy.…”