Phillips Jennifer J, Smith Cynthia L, Bell Martha Ann
Department of Psychology, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, 24060, USA.
Department of Human Development and Family Science, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, 24060, USA.
Borderline Personal Disord Emot Dysregul. 2024 Nov 27;11(1):30. doi: 10.1186/s40479-024-00273-0.
Adaptive strategies of emotion regulation are important for adolescents, as maladaptive strategies of such can manifest as psychopathology that is sometimes severe. Individual biological characteristics and influences from peers have been shown to have an effect on the development of emotion regulation strategies in adolescents. Maternal factors, however, have received less attention in this age group regarding how they might predict emotion regulation in adolescents. Given that prior work has demonstrated that certain maternal factors, like emotion regulation and personality, play a crucial role in the development of emotion regulation strategies in early childhood, we sought to examine these associations in adolescents in our current study.
Adolescents and their mothers (n = 123) both self-reported data on their own emotion regulation, and mothers also self-reported data on their own personality dysfunction. We operationalized maternal and adolescent emotion regulation as emotion suppression, a maladaptive emotion regulation strategy that is commonly used by adolescents.
Our data demonstrated that both maternal emotion suppression and interpersonal personality dysfunction were positively associated with adolescent emotion suppression. No associations among maternal intrapersonal personality functioning and adolescent emotion suppression were detected.
Maternal personality dysfunction and emotion suppression both independently predicted adolescent emotion suppression use. These results support the idea that maternal characteristics play a role in shaping emotion regulation in adolescence.
情绪调节的适应性策略对青少年很重要，因为不适应的策略可能表现为有时很严重的精神病理学症状。个体生物学特征和同伴影响已被证明对青少年情绪调节策略的发展有影响。然而，在这个年龄组中，母亲因素对青少年情绪调节的预测作用受到的关注较少。鉴于先前的研究表明，某些母亲因素，如情绪调节和个性，在幼儿情绪调节策略的发展中起着关键作用，我们试图在当前研究中检验青少年中的这些关联。
青少年及其母亲（n = 123）都自我报告了自己的情绪调节数据，母亲还自我报告了自己的个性功能障碍数据。我们将母亲和青少年的情绪调节操作化为情绪抑制，这是一种青少年常用的不适应情绪调节策略。
我们的数据表明，母亲的情绪抑制和人际个性功能障碍都与青少年的情绪抑制呈正相关。未检测到母亲的个人内个性功能与青少年情绪抑制之间的关联。
母亲的个性功能障碍和情绪抑制都独立地预测了青少年情绪抑制的使用。这些结果支持了母亲特征在塑造青少年情绪调节方面起作用的观点。
