Change the Things You Can: Emotion Regulation Is More Beneficial for People from Lower Than from Higher Socioeconomic Status

Publication Date

2-1-2017

Document Type

Article

Organizational Units

College of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences, Psychology

Keywords

Young adult, Humans, Adult, Female, Male, Social class, Emotions, Physiology, Emotion regulation, Cognitive reappraisal

Abstract

Emotion regulation is central to psychological health, and several emotion-regulation strategies have been identified as beneficial. However, new theorizing suggests the benefits of emotion regulation should depend on its context. One important contextual moderator might be socioeconomic status (SES), because SES powerfully shapes people’s ecology: lower SES affords less control over one’s environment and thus, the ability to self-regulate should be particularly important. Accordingly, effectively regulating one’s emotions (e.g., using cognitive reappraisal) could be more beneficial in lower (vs. higher) SES contexts. Three studies (N = 429) tested whether SES moderates the link between cognitive reappraisal ability (CRA; measured with surveys and in the laboratory) and depression. Each study and a meta-analysis of the 3 studies revealed that CRA was associated with less depression for lower SES but not higher SES individuals. Thus, CRA may be uniquely beneficial in lower SES contexts. More broadly, the effects of emotion regulation depend upon the ecology within which it is used.

Copyright Date

2016

Copyright Statement / License for Reuse

All Rights Reserved
All Rights Reserved.

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by the American Psychological Association. User is responsible for all copyright compliance. This article was originally published as:

Troy, A. S., Ford, B. Q., McRae, K., Zarolia, P., & Mauss, I. B. (2017). Change the things you can: Emotion regulation is more beneficial for people from lower than from higher socioeconomic status. Emotion, 17(1), 141–154. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000210

Accepted Manuscript is openly available through the "Link to Full Text" button.

The published Version of Record is available at libraries through Compass or Worldcat.

Rights Holder

American Psychological Association

Provenance

Received from CHORUS

Language

English (eng)

Publication Title

Emotion

Volume

17

Issue

1

First Page

141

Last Page

154

ISSN

1931-1516

PubMed ID

27559819

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