Interactive association between negative emotion regulation and savoring is linked to anxiety symptoms among college students

Abstract

Objective: This study tested the interactive relationships between college students’ perceived capability of regulating negative emotions and savoring positive emotions on mental health outcomes, including anxiety and depressive symptoms. Participants: Participants were healthy undergraduates (n = 167) recruited from two universities in Hong Kong. Methods: Students completed four scales assessing their perceived capability of using strategies to regulate negative and positive emotions and their anxiety and depressive symptoms. Results: Findings revealed that both anxiety and depressive symptoms were negatively linked to perceived capabilities of regulating negative emotions and savoring positive emotions. Furthermore, regulating negative emotions interacted with savoring positive emotions to predict anxiety symptoms. Conclusions: The need to simultaneously perform negative and positive emotion regulation is highlighted. The results suggest the priority of regulating negative emotions over savoring positive emotions in alleviating anxiety symptoms. Nevertheless, enhancing positive emotion shows greater benefits for those who are less adept at regulating negative emotions.

Keywords:

• Anxiety symptoms
• college students
• depressive symptoms
• emotion regulation
• savoring

Conflict of interest disclosure

The authors have no conflicts of interest to report. The authors confirm that the research presented in this article met the ethical guidelines, including adherence to the legal requirements, of Hong Kong and received approval from the Human Research Ethics Committees of the Education University of Hong Kong and the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Acknowledgments

We wish to thank Mr. Tsang Hin Fai for his contribution to the data collection of this study. The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by grants from the Centre for Psychosocial Health, CPH-2015-16-3, EdUHK and the Departmental Research Grant, DRG/2015-16, Department of Psychology, EdUHK.