Interpersonal emotion regulation and emotional adjustment among Chinese early adolescents: Within-person associations...

Previous theories and empirical studies suggest that interpersonal emotion regulation (IER) and specific IER strategies are closely linked to emotional adjustment. However, reciprocal associations among these constructs have rarely been examined while accounting for the temporal stability, and the existing evidence remains mixed. Using random intercept cross-lagged panel models (RI-CLPM), this study examined within-person bidirectional associations between IER and emotional adjustment (depressive symptoms and life satisfaction) among Chinese early adolescents. This study then investigated whether these associations differed across four specific IER strategies: enhancement of positive affect, perspective taking, soothing, and social modeling.

Data were collected from 795 adolescents (56.7% boys, Mage = 13.38, SD = 0.72) at a secondary school across three time points over six months.

IER was positively associated with life satisfaction, and negatively associated with depressive symptoms at the between-person level. At the within-person level, IER and its specific strategies showed heterogeneous prospective associations with life satisfaction across measurement intervals; Depressive symptoms showed marginal negative associations with subsequent engagement in IER, particularly for soothing.

These findings extend prior literature by suggesting that IER and its specific strategies may be more closely linked to life satisfaction, but not to depressive symptoms. Instead, depressive symptoms may also be associated with reduced subsequent engagement in IER, particularly for soothing. These results highlight the importance of considering directionality in the association between IER and emotional adjustment.