Longitudinal associations between emotion regulation strategies and subjective well-being in migrant and non-migrant adolescents in urban China

Abstract

This study examined the long-term reciprocal impact of two key emotion regulation strategies, cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression, on the subjective well-being of migrant and non-migrant adolescents in urban China. A total of 2397 middle school students from urban China (864 migrant, Mage = 13.05 years, SD = 0.62, 41.7% girls; 1533 non-migrant, Mage = 13.01 years, SD = 0.47, 50.1% girls) were followed from 2016 to 2017. Data on the two emotion regulation strategies (measured using the Chinese version of the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire) and subjective well-being (measured using the Subjective Well-Being Inventory) were collected. Although no differences were found in the use of cognitive reappraisal, migrant adolescents reported greater use of expressive suppression than non-migrant adolescents. Furthermore, a two-group cross-lagged panel analysis showed that cognitive reappraisal positively predicted subjective well-being among both migrant and non-migrant adolescents, whereas expressive suppression was positively related to subjective well-being in only migrant adolescents. Migrant adolescents with higher levels of subjective well-being jointly used cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression, while non-migrant adolescents were prone to only using cognitive reappraisal. These findings indicate that group-level context influences both the utilisation and functionality of emotion regulation strategies among migrant and non-migrant adolescents in urban China.