Prosocial Behavior and Aggression in the Daily School Lives of Early Adolescents.

Research has not adequately addressed a possible mutual co-regulatory influence of prosocial and aggressive behaviors in adolescents' daily lives. This study explored bidirectional within-person associations between prosocial and aggressive behaviors in the daily school lives of early adolescents. The sample included 242 sixth-graders [Mage = 11.96 (SD = 0.18), 50% girls] and their teachers. Adolescents reported on daily prosocial behavior and reactive and proactive aggression for ten consecutive days. Teachers and adolescents reported on adolescents' overall prosocial behaviors. Across-day prosocial behaviors increased after days when adolescents exhibited more reactive aggression but not among self-reported low-prosocial adolescents. Increased prosocial behaviors did not mitigate aggression the next day. The findings suggest prosocial behaviors are a plausible compensatory strategy after daily aggressive reactions.

Emotion regulation during personal goal pursuit: Integration versus suppression of emotions.

OBJECTIVE: Goal pursuit may involve setbacks likely to elicit negative emotions. To continue pursuing the goal, an individual may need to regulate those emotions. In this study, we compared the unique contributions of two emotion regulation styles, integrative emotion regulation (IER) and suppressive emotion regulation (SER), to goal pursuit processes. We tested the hypotheses that IER and SER would be differentially related to goal progress and goal-related effort and goal-related depressed mood would mediate those relations. METHOD: 255 Israeli participants completed five web questionnaires at two-week intervals. We examined the mediation hypothesis using multilevel structural equation modeling. RESULTS: At the within-person level, increases in IER predicted increases in goal progress at a given time point through increases in goal-related effort, while increases in SER predicted decreases in goal progress through increases in goal-related depressed mood. At the between-persons level, participants with higher IER reported more goal progress; this effect was mediated by goal-related effort. Participants with higher SER reported lower goal progress; this effect was mediated by higher goal-related depressed mood. The findings held after controlling for such factors as participants' perceived goal competence, goal stress, sex, and age. CONCLUSIONS: IER promotes goal pursuit, but SER impedes it.

Benefits of emotional integration and costs of emotional distancing.

OBJECTIVE: Three studies explored the consequences of the self-determination theory conception of integrative emotion regulation (IER; Ryan & Deci, 2017), which involves an interested stance toward emotions. Emotional, physiological, and cognitive consequences of IER were compared to the consequences of emotional distancing (ED), in relation to a fear-eliciting film. METHOD: In Study 1, we manipulated emotion regulation by prompting students' (N = 90) IER and ED and also included a control group. Then we tested groups' defensive versus nondefensive emotional processing, coded from post-film written texts. Study 2 (N = 90) and Study 3 (N = 135) used the same emotion regulation manipulations but exposed participants to the fear-eliciting film twice, 72 hr apart, to examine each style's protection from adverse emotional, physiological, and cognitive costs at second exposure. RESULTS: Participants who had been prompted to practice IER were expected to benefit more than participants in the ED and control groups at second exposure, as manifested in lower arousal and better cognitive capacity. Overall, results supported our hypotheses. CONCLUSIONS: The current studies provide some support for the assumption that in comparison to ED, taking interest in and accepting one's negative emotions are linked with less defensive processing of negative experiences and with better functioning.

Emotion regulation styles and Adolescent adjustment following a COVID-19 lockdown.

This study explored the effect of emotion regulation styles - integrative emotion regulation (IER), suppressive emotion regulation, and dysregulation-on adolescents' psychosocial adjustment following a Covid-19-related lockdown. 114 mother-adolescent dyads were surveyed after lockdown and at two additional time points (three and six months later). Adolescents were aged 10-16 years, 50.9% females. Adolescents reported on their emotion regulation styles. Mothers and adolescents reported on adolescents' well-being (depressive symptoms, negative and positive emotions) and social behaviour (aggression and prosocial behaviour). Results of multilevel linear growth models showed IER predicted optimal well-being and social behaviour reported by both mothers and adolescents at baseline and a self-reported reduction in prosocial behaviours over time. Suppressive emotion regulation predicted reduced self-reported well-being after lockdown, evident in higher levels of negative affect and depressive symptoms and reductions in mother-reported prosocial behaviour over time. Dysregulation predicted reduced well-being and impaired social behaviour after lockdown, reported by both mothers and adolescents, and a reduction in self-reported depressive symptoms over time. Results suggest adolescents' adjustment to lockdown was affected by their habitual emotion regulation styles.

Emotional integration and reappraisal during goal pursuit: Testing within- and between-person differences.

Goal pursuit is rife with obstacles triggering negative emotions. To persist in goal pursuit, individuals need to regulate these emotions using adaptive emotion regulation strategies. Reappraisal and emotional integration are two such strategies. Reappraisal involves people's attempts to reframe how they are thinking about an emotional situation, whereas emotional integration involves taking an interest in emotions as they arise. In three studies, we examined the distinct effects of these two strategies on goal pursuit at the within-person and the between-person levels. Study 1 (N = 264) was a three-wave, short-term longitudinal study. At the within-person level, emotional integration predicted goal progress and goal effort but also predicted negative affect, while reappraisal predicted goal progress and positive affect. At the between-person level, emotional integration was positively related to optimal goal pursuit outcomes, whereas reappraisal was negatively related. Study 2 (N = 154) and Study 3 (N = 366) used daily methodologies and followed participants across 10 days. At the daily within-person level, reappraisal was a stronger predictor of goal progress, goal effort, and positive affect than emotional integration. Emotional integration predicted daily negative affect. In contrast, at the between-person level, emotional integration better predicted these outcomes than reappraisal. Collectively, these studies provide a nuanced understanding of how adaptive emotion regulation strategies relate to goal pursuit. The results show that within-participants reappraisal is more strongly related to increased goal progress, effort, and positive affect than emotional integration. However, habitual emotional integration aligns with greater overall goal effort and progress than habitual reappraisal. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Mastery-approach and performance-approach goals predict distinct outcomes during personal academic goal pursuit.

BACKGROUND: Mastery and performance goals are typically measured as trait-like abstract goals. However, in their daily academic pursuits, students pursue more concrete goals. The pursuit of these goals is replete with obstacles that can lead to an action crisis. AIMS: We examined how mastery and performance goals affect progress, effort and well-being during academic goal pursuit. We also asked whether these goals moderated relations between an action crisis and goal pursuit. SAMPLE: 154 Israeli students (average age = 23.59 years, SD = 2.17; 62% female) preparing for an exam. METHODS: In this daily diary study, participants first reported the date of their most stressful exam, two related goals, and their trait-like achievement goals (mastery, performance). They then completed daily questionnaires assessing their progress, effort, well-being and action crisis on the 10 days leading up to the exam. RESULTS: Multilevel modelling showed mastery goals positively predicted daily goal effort and progress and negatively predicted daily action crises, while performance goals positively predicted daily negative affect and action crises. An action crisis was negatively correlated with next-day goal progress and positive affect among students with high-performance goals. In students with low-performance goals, an action crisis positively predicted next-day positive affect. Finally, for students high on mastery goals, an action crisis was unrelated to negative affect on the same day. CONCLUSIONS: Different trait-like achievement goals can be mapped onto a common personal goal and affect its pursuit differently. Mastery goals predict optimal goal pursuit, and performance goals are associated with non-optimal goal pursuit.

'Prosociality' in Daily School Life and Early Adolescents' Peer Aggression: A Multilevel Latent Profile Analysis Approach.

We aimed to typify prosocial characteristics of aggressive youth. We classified early adolescents based on daily configurations of prosocial behavior and autonomous prosocial motivations (performing prosocial behavior for identified and intrinsic reasons) and controlled prosocial motivations (performing prosocial behavior for external and introjected reasons) and explored the links between the obtained sub-groups and peer aggression. The sample included 242 Israeli six-graders [Mage = 11.96 (SD = 0.18), 50% girls] and their teachers. At the daily level, adolescents self-reported on prosocial behaviors and their autonomous and controlled prosocial motivations for ten consecutive days. At the trait level, adolescents reported on global, reactive, and proactive peer aggression. Teachers reported on adolescents' global peer aggression. Using multilevel latent profile analysis, we identified four day-level profiles of prosociality: 'high prosocial autonomous' (39% of days), 'low prosocial' (35%), 'average prosocial controlled' (14%), and 'high prosocial bi-motivation' (13%). At the adolescent level, we identified four sub-groups, each characterized by one dominant daily profile: 'stable high autonomy' (33% of adolescents); 'stable high bi-motivation' (12%); 'often average controlled' (16%); 'often low' (39%). Higher self-reported aggressive adolescents, particularly proactive aggressive, had the least chance of being in the 'stable high autonomy' sub-group of all sub-groups. Teacher-reported aggressive adolescents had the least likelihood of being in the 'stable high autonomy' sub-group and the most likelihood of being in the 'often low' sub-group. In sum, peer aggression is a function of the configured phenomenology of prosocial behavior and motivations, with high prosocial autonomously motivated youth being the least aggressive.

Internalization of Mastery Goals: The Differential Effect of Teachers' Autonomy Support and Control.

Two linked studies explored whether students' perceptions differentiate between teachers' autonomy support and control when presenting mastery goals, and the outcomes of these two practices, in terms of students' internalization of mastery goals and their behavioral engagement. In two phases, Study 1 (N = 317) sought to validate a new instrument assessing students' perceptions of teachers' autonomy support and control when presenting mastery goals. Study 2 (N = 1,331) demonstrated that at both within- and between-classroom levels, perceptions of teachers' autonomy support for mastery goals were related to students' mastery goals' endorsement and behavioral engagement. These relations were mediated by students' autonomous reasons to pursue learning activities. Perceptions of teachers' control predicted disengagement through controlled reasons for learning, but only at the within-classroom level. This research joins a growing body of work demonstrating that combining achievement goal theory with SDT can further our understanding of the underpinnings of achievement motivation. It suggests that if teachers want their students to endorse mastery goals (and be more engaged), they need to use more autonomy supportive practices and less controlling ones.

Choosing to Regulate Emotions: Pursuing Emotion Goals in Autonomy-Supportive and Controlling Contexts.

We applied self-determination theory to emotion regulation and tested the potential effects of autonomy-supportive and controlling contexts on the pursuit of emotion goals. In four experimental studies (N = 242), participants viewed a fear-eliciting film clip or emotion-eliciting pictures and were prompted to pursue emotion goals with either autonomy-supportive or controlling instructions. Participants in both conditions were equally likely to engage in emotion regulation when directly instructed to do so. However, when they were allowed to spontaneously choose whether to regulate emotions or not, participants in the autonomy-supportive contexts were more likely than those in the controlling ones to independently pursue emotion goals. The latter also engaged in more defensive processing of emotion-eliciting stimuli than the former. These results indicate that people are more likely to pursue emotion goals of their own accord when the context in which they pursue them is autonomy supportive, rather than controlling.

Integration of negative emotional experience versus suppression: addressing the question of adaptive functioning.

Integrative emotion regulation is defined as the ability to experience negative emotions, explore their sources, and use this exploration for volitional regulation of behavior. Empirical research on integrative regulation is quite scarce and relies mainly on self-reports. The present research comprised 2 studies exploring the behavioral, emotional, and cognitive consequences of integrative emotion regulation and suppression of emotion, in relation to a fear-eliciting film. Study 1 examined associations between emotion regulation types (self-reported) and defensive versus nondefensive emotional processing (coded from postfilm open-ended written texts) in 80 Israeli college students. In Study 2, we manipulated the emotion regulation types by assigning 120 Israeli college students to integrative, suppressive, and control (neutral) conditions and exposing them twice to the same fear-eliciting film, 72 hr apart. We hypothesized that in the second exposure to the film, participants who were instructed to practice integrative regulation would benefit more than participants in the other 2 groups in terms of lower arousal level related to an experience of fear (measured by skin conductance, physical observation, and self-report) and better cognitive capacity (on a recall test). In general, the results supported our hypotheses. In comparison to suppression, integrative regulation was associated with less defensive written expression in the first study and with lower arousal and better cognitive recall in the second study. Hence, current outcomes provide some support for the assumption that taking interest in and accepting one's negative emotions is linked with less defensive processing of negative experiences and with better functioning.