Emotion Regulation Profiles in Childhood and Adolescence – A Process-Oriented Perspective

Emotion regulation (ER) plays a crucial role in children’s and adolescents’ development and is closely linked to well-being. ER strategies are commonly categorized as functional (e.g., reappraisal) or dysfunctional (e.g., suppression). From a theoretical perspective, ER strategies can also be categorized according to their temporal position within the emotion-generating process, which is reflected in five families of ER strategies: situation selection, situation modification, attentional deployment, cognitive change, and response modulation (Gross, 1998). Building on this process-oriented perspective, individuals may rely on different ER strategies. Person-centered approaches can reveal patterns in strategy use; however, research on ER profiles in school-aged children and adolescents from a process-oriented perspective remains scarce. The present study aims to identify distinct ER profiles among primary and secondary school children (Objective 1), examine age, gender, and school type as a predictor of profile membership (Objective 2), and investigate differences in well-being with respect to profile membership (Objective 3).