Assessing emotion regulation repertoires: The Regulation of Emotion Systems Survey

doi:10.1016/j.paid.2017.07.018

Personality and Individual Differences

Volume 119, 1 December 2017, Pages 204-215

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2017.07.018 Get rights and content

Highlights

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The RESS is a valid, effective, and reliable measure of six common ER strategies.
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ER profiles with average levels of all ER strategies demonstrated greater wellbeing.
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Intensity and frequency of emotional experiences did not influence ER repertoire.

Abstract

Research has shown a link between emotion regulation (ER) repertoire, the range of ER strategies an individual employs and the degree to which they rely on them, and well-being. However, this advancement is hindered by the lack of a single measurement tool capable of assessing multiple ER strategies on a common scale. The current paper reports on two studies utilizing the Regulation of Emotion Systems Survey (RESS), a new self-report measure allowing for variable- and person-centered analyses of six common ER strategies (Distraction, Rumination, Reappraisal, Suppression, Engagement, Arousal Control). Study 1 (n = 1582) included scale development, validation, and Latent Profile Analysis (LPA). Results showed the RESS is a valid, reliable, and effective measure. Three profiles were identified (Average, Suppression Propensity, Engagement Propensity). The Average group reported greater psychosocial functioning than the Suppression group. Study 2 (n = 100) LPA indicated 4 profiles (Average, Suppression Propensity, Engagement Propensity, Multi-strategy) and assessed the effects of emotionality. The Average group reported lower emotional awareness than the Engagement and Multi-Strategy groups. Profiles did not differ on frequency or intensity of emotions. Findings demonstrated the utility of the RESS and confirm the importance of ER repertoires to better understand connections between ER and well-being.

Section snippets

The current research

The current research consisted of two independent studies. The objectives of the first study were to 1) develop a self-report measure (RESS) to assess an individual's propensity to utilize six ER strategies when experiencing a negative emotion; 2) assess the validity of the RESS; 3) identify various ER repertoires through the use of a person-centered analysis (Lougheed and Hollenstein, 2012, Zalewski et al., 2011), and 4) determine the relation between various ER repertoires and indicators of

Participants

Participants included 1606 students enrolled in a first year Psychology class. Participants were asked to complete a package of questionnaires, including the RESS, as part of their class requirements. Twenty-four cases where participants completed < 75% of the questions were removed from the dataset, resulting in a sample size of 1582. Participants were between the ages of 16 and 33 years old (M = 18.2, SD = 1.2). The majority of participants was female (75.5%) and identified as Caucasian (77.8%

Study 2

It is possible that the differential patterns of ER strategy use found in Study 1 were due to fundamentally different experiences of emotions themselves. Although all individuals use ER to down-regulate their experience of negative emotion to some extent, it is possible that some individuals feel the need to do so more than others. Emotional reactivity, how often an individual has emotional responses (Nelson & Perry, 2015) and emotional intensity, how intensely an individual feels emotions (

General discussion

Based on the results of two independent studies, the RESS was an effective measure of the six ER strategies it aimed to assess. The subscales of Rumination, Reappraisal, Engagement, and Suppression were each significantly correlated with their corresponding measure of convergent validity. Moreover, the RESS allows for a more efficient measure of the six ER strategies than combining existing measures as it provides a consistent response scale and focuses on the down-regulation of negative

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Citation Excerpt :
Competency measures aim to evaluate individuals' overall ER ability, such as the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS; Gratz & Roemer, 2004) and the Perth Emotion Regulation Competency Inventory (PERCI; Preece et al., 2018), which are ideal to provide an overall index of ER competency. On the contrary, process measures assess individuals' tendencies to use a range of emotion regulation strategies, such as the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ; Gross & John, 2003) and the Regulation of Emotion Systems Survey (RESS; De France & Hollenstein, 2017), which are necessary for clinical research about ER. For example, process measures could be used to examine the adaptive or maladaptive function of ER strategies, the effects of ER interventions, and emotion regulation repertoires (e.g., De France & Hollenstein, 2017; Eadeh et al., 2021; Gross & John, 2003; Kim & Kang, 2022; Sloan et al., 2017).
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View full text

Assessing emotion regulation repertoires: The Regulation of Emotion Systems Survey

Highlights

Abstract

Section snippets

The current research

Participants

Study 2

General discussion

Current Opinion in Psychology

Behaviour Research and Therapy

Personality and Individual Differences

Behaviour Research and Therapy

Information theory and an extension of the maximum likelihood principle

Emotion regulation flexibility

Cognitive Therapy and Research

The inventory of peer and parent attachment: Individual differences and their relationship to psychological well-being in adolescence

Journal of Youth and Adolescence

Are emotions natural kinds?

Perspectives on Psychological Science

Emotional intelligence: A process model of emotion representation and regulation

A positive approach to children's internalizing problems

Professional Psychology: Research and Practice

Emotional reactivity: Critical analysis and proposal of a new scale

International Journal of Applied Psychology

Inventory for measuring clinical anxiety: Psychometric properties

Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology

Manual for the Beck depression inventory-II

Facets of emotional awareness and associations with emotion regulation and depression

Emotion

The importance of being flexible the ability to both enhance and suppress emotional expression predicts long-term adjustment

Psychological Science

Emotion and motivation

Hiding feelings in social contexts: Out of sight is not out of mind

On the nature of emotion regulation

Child Development

A functionalist perspective on the nature of emotion

Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development

Reconceptualizing emotion regulation

Emotion Review

An entropy criterion for assessing the number of clusters in a mixture model

Journal of Classification

What we talk about when we talk about emotion

Emotion Review

Adolescent development and the regulation of behavior and emotion: Introduction to part VIII

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

Relaxation and cognitive-relaxation treatments of general anger

Journal of Counseling Psychology

Repertoires of emotion regulation: A person-centered approach to assessing emotion regulation strategies and links to psychopathology

Cognition & Emotion

Adaptation and initial psychometric study of the self-report version of Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale (LSAS-SR)

International Journal of Psychiatry in Clinical Practice

Comparing data from online and face-to-face surveys

International Journal of Market Research

Preparatory data analysis

Neural systems of positive affect: relevance to understanding child and adolescent depression?

Development and psychopathology