Strategies for regulating achievement emotions: Conceptualization and relations with university students’ emotions, well-being, and health

Students’ achievement emotions profoundly influence their learning, academic performance, well-being, and educational trajectories. Understanding how students regulate these emotions is crucial for their academic flourishing. We examined students’ strategies for regulating three common achievement emotions (enjoyment, anxiety, boredom), and how these strategies relate to emotions, academic well-being, health problems, and achievement-related outcomes. Our theoretical model of emotion regulation strategies is derived from the control-value theory of achievement emotions (Pekrun, 2006) and Harley et al.’s (2019) model of emotion regulation in achievement settings. It considers six groups of strategies: situation selection, social support, reappraisal, expression, suppression, and competence development. Participants included 350 (Study 1; Germany), 359 (Study 2; England), and 200 (Study 3; Germany) university students. Studies 1 and 2 were cross-sectional. Study 3 employed a five-wave prospective design and focused on course-specific achievement emotion regulation over one semester. We used a newly developed context- and emotion-specific measure of the six strategies targeting enjoyment, anxiety, and boredom (Regulation of Achievement Emotions Questionnaire, RAEQ). Strategies were linked to students’ emotions, well-being, health, and academic achievement (perceived success, Studies 1 and 2; end-of-semester test scores, Study 3) across all three studies. Furthermore, achievement emotion regulation strategies were related to, but distinct from, general emotion regulation strategies. Findings highlight the importance of students’ regulation of both positive and negative emotions, suggest that emotion regulation is context-specific, and imply that reappraisal and competence development are especially adaptive. We discuss implications for educational practice and future research. • Examines structures, use, and correlates of six emotion regulation strategies. • Considers emotion-specific strategies for regulating enjoyment, anxiety, boredom. • Presents three field studies with university students (German, English). • Regulatory strategies were closely related to emotions, well-being, and health. • Reveals reappraisal and competence development are adaptive strategies.