https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1375-005X
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ABSTRACT
Individuals’ beliefs about the malleability of emotions have been theorised to play a role in their psychological distress by influencing emotion regulation processes, such as the use of emotion regulation strategies. We conducted a meta-analysis to test this idea across studies with a focus on the relationships between emotion malleability beliefs and five distinct emotion regulation strategies: cognitive reappraisal, suppression, avoidance, rumination, and acceptance. Further, using two-stage meta-analytic structural equation modelling (TSSEM), we examined whether the emotion regulation strategies mediate the cross-sectional relationship between emotion malleability beliefs and psychological distress across studies. Thirty-seven studies were included in the meta-analyses and 55 cross-sectional studies were included in the TSSEM. Results demonstrated that, across studies, emotion malleability beliefs were significantly associated with greater use of putatively helpful strategies (particularly with cognitive reappraisal) and less use of putatively unhelpful strategies (particularly with avoidance). The use of cognitive reappraisal and avoidance partially mediated the relationship between emotion malleability beliefs and psychological distress. These results highlight the importance of considering beliefs about the malleability of emotions in the context of emotion regulation. These findings suggest the potential role of emotion malleability beliefs in interventions for individuals with emotion regulation-related difficulties and psychological distress.
Contributors
Yunsu Kim: Conceptualisation, Formal analysis, and Writing-original draft; Sooyeon Kim: Data coding and Writing- review & editing; Sunkyung Yoon: Conceptualisation, Data coding, Formal analysis, and Writing- review & editing.
Data availability
Data used in this study is available at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/2TZF3.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s ).
Notes
1 Although Burnette et al. (Citation2020)’s meta-analysis examined problem-solving (combined with reappraisal) as active coping in relation to growth mindsets in general, this study did not include problem-solving due to the paucity of previous work on emotion malleability beliefs that specifically assessed problem-solving.
2 For the current meta-analyses on the beliefs-ER relationships, we included all articles regardless of whether psychological distress was measured.
3 The results from moderator analyses in cognitive reappraisal (study design and belief type), suppression (study design), and avoidance (belief type) were consistent with those from the analyses involving the other sets of effect sizes (see Supplementary Material C for details).
4 Two studies examined expressive suppression as a mediator and showed conflicting results: suppression was a significant mediator in De France and Hollenstein (Citation2021) but not in Ford et al. (Citation2018). One study found that rumination significantly mediated the emotion malleability beliefs-distress relationship (Kneeland & Dovidio, Citation2020).