Motivational factors enhancing effective emotion regulation among adolescents

Abstract

Emotion regulation is the skills and methods required to influence and regulate adolescents' emotional experiences as their emotional life differs from other stages. It is assumed to be an essential factor in adolescents' mental health, well-being, and successful functioning. It significantly influences emotional and behavioral disorders in children and adolescents. People are prone to behave in a way that leads to desirable outcomes; it is hypothesized that adolescents' motivation to change maladaptive emotion regulation may have an impact on increasing effective emotion regulation and mental health. The main goal of the present study was to investigate the interplay between adolescents' motivation to change, emotion regulation, and mental health. Specifically, we wanted to see if the motivation to change significantly impacts effective emotion regulation and if the motivation to change and mental health can predict emotion regulation. Besides exploring gender differences for emotion regulation, motivation to change, mental health, and emotion regulation subscale scores of adolescents. To accomplish the goals of the research, cross-sectional survey design was employed, and 250 adolescents between the ages of 12 and 18 were selected for the study using a convenient selection method. All the participants filled out three questionnaires, which are the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ), the University of Rhode Island Change Assessment Scale (URICA), and the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). Multiple linear regression analysis were done to identify the predictors, and an independent sample t-tests were used to see the gender difference among all variables' scale scores and sub-scales of emotion regulation. The study results revealed that, in combination, motivation to change, mental health strength scores, and mental health difficulties scores significantly predicted effective emotion regulation, and as a unique independent variable, motivation to change significantly predicted effective emotion regulation. The results also showed that there is no noteworthy gender difference between males and females regarding scores. The findings of this study have implications for planning adolescent intervention programs to increase motivation to change maladaptive emotion regulation. Since less adaptive emotion regulation is a risk factor for developing mental health difficulties in the future, techniques and more research to increase effective emotion regulation need to be incorporated.