The relationship between beliefs about emotion and mental health among Malaysian young adults: the mediational role of emotion regulation.

Shorolipi, Emma Chaudhury (2023) The relationship between beliefs about emotion and mental health among Malaysian young adults: the mediational role of emotion regulation. Masters thesis, Sunway University.

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Abstract

Emotional disorders are becoming more prevalent among Malaysian young adults, indicating difficulties to healthily regulate emotions. This study investigated the association between beliefs about controllability of emotions (entity or incremental) and mental health, with usage of emotion regulation (ER) strategies proposed to mediate this relationship. Mental health is investigated in terms of anxiety, depressive symptoms and well-being whereas, ER strategies included reappraisal, suppression, enhancing positive affect, perspective taking, soothing and social modelling. Participants were 216 young adults aged 18-30 recruited via convenience sampling. They completed the 4-item Implicit Theories of Emotion Scale, 10-item Emotion Regulation Questionnaire, 20-item Interpersonal Emotion Regulation Questionnaire, 14-item Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale, Patient Health Questionnaire-9 and the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7. Results showed that reappraisal mediated the relationship between entity beliefs and well-being, b=-1.324, 95% BCI [-2.527, -0.282] and incremental beliefs and well-being, b=1.324, 95% BCI [0.275, 2.540] whereas, social modelling mediated the relationship between entity beliefs and anxiety symptoms, b=-0.421, 95% BCI [-0.882, -0.079] and incremental beliefs and anxiety symptoms, b=0.421, 95% BCI [0.087, 0.890]. Higher suppression predicted more anxiety (b=0.757, p=0.025) and depressive symptoms (b=1.446, p=0.0001) whereas higher perspective taking predicted less anxiety (b=-0.286, p=0.009) and depressive symptoms (b=-0.264, p=0.030). Higher perspective taking (b=0.705, p<.001) and soothing (b=0.621, p<.001) also predicted higher well-being. Supporting the rationale behind implicit theories, the findings suggest that entity or incremental beliefs predicted the capability of regulating emotions, indicating worse or better mental health. Practising more reappraisal is suggested to be beneficial while social modelling usage is rather disadvantageous.

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