Exploring Young Adults’ Implicit Theories of Emotion and Emotion Dysregulation on Parental Emotion Socialization and Internalizing Symptomology

Research regarding emotion socialization suggests parents’ responses towards their children’s negative emotions, which may be characterized as either emotion dismissive or emotion coaching behaviors, are associated with children’s well-being into adulthood. A heuristic model of emotion socialization suggests that child-level factors related to emotion processing may moderate this association (Eisenberg, 1998), which warrants further examination when considering relevant risk factors for mental health disorders such as anxiety and depression. This dissertation explored how parent emotion socialization responses interact with young adults’ beliefs about the controllability of emotions and their difficulties with emotion regulation with regard to their impact on young adult internalizing symptoms. In addition to moderation models, this study expanded upon a limited literature base by examining the relation between young adults’ implicit theories of emotion and emotion dysregulation. Findings did not support the proposed moderation but revealed the direct effects of individual-level factors on internalizing symptomology. Studying these constructs in a young adult population contributes to a research field that primarily focuses on child and adolescent populations and supports implicit theories of emotion as a potential treatment target.