bîlc cioară miu emotions, 2015
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8/18/2019 Bîlc Cioară Miu Emotions, 2015
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BABEŞ-BOLYAI UNIVERSITY
Childhood socioeconomic status and emotion regulation difficultiesMirela Bîlc1, Marius Cioar ă2, & Andrei C. Miu11Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania2Department of Psychology, University of Oradea, Oradea, Romania
Abstract
This study investigated the relation between childhoodsocioeconomic status (SES) and adult emotion regulation.
Main findings indicated that early access to community
resources predicted emotion regulation difficulties in
adulthood, when controlling for the effects of age, sex and
current SES. No such effects were found for other
indicators of childhood SES, such as parental education,
occupation, or family income.
Introduction
Aim
Effects of SES were investigated in relation to a
particular class of intrapersonal resources, namely onhow individuals regulate their emotions.
In light of the current findings, we hypothesized that
childhood socioeconomic status will impact adult
emotion regulation. Using a multilevel approach on
SES, we investigated effects of both community and
individual/familial SES on difficulties in emotion
regulation.
Methods
Results
Conclusions
Low SES is associated with more depressive, anxious
and hostile symptoms, with this effect being only
partially explained by differences in stress exposure.
Alternative hypotheses suggest that lower SES
individuals, living in scarce environments, developfewer resources to deal with stressors, resulting in
higher reactivity (Gallo & Matthews, 2003).
Emotion regulation, refers to the process by which
individuals influence which emotions they have, when
they have them and how these are expressed
(Gross,1998, 2014). Difficulties in emotion regulation
are considered a core target in mental health
interventions (Aldao et. al., 2010; Werner & Gross,
2010).
Children coming from "risky families", characterized by
conflicts, cold parenting and low SES, have various
deficits in emotion regulation (Repetti, Taylor, &
Seeman, 2002). Neuroimaging studies also report
atypical responses to emotional stimuli and reduced
activity in regions involved in regulating emotional
responses for adults with low childhood SES (Kim et
al., 2013; Taylor et. al., 2006).
Neighborhood SES impacts school readiness,
academic achievement, but also behavioral and
emotional problems, after accounting for individual and
family characteristics (Leventhal & Brooks-Gunn,
2000).
A twin study also showed that neighborhood
deprivation, as a specific form of shared environment
influence, has an impact on children s̀ behavioral
problems at age 2, above and beyond genetic factors
(Caspi et. al., 2000).
6th International conference on emotions, well-being and health, Tilburg, NL
Items Human Capital Financial Capital Community Capital
Mother education .81 -.05 .04
Father education .83 -.03 .01
Mother occupation .75 .01 .02
Father occupation .73 .08 -.09
Family income .00 .98 -.00
Access to education .01 .15 .70
Access to medical services -.04 .03 .78
Access to recreational resources .01 -.03 .80
Neighborhood safety .01 -.11 .75
Table 1
Factor Loadings for Principal Component Analysis with Promax Rotation
Note. Component loadings over .40 appear in bold
Participants: N = 424 participants (370 women,aged 19.95 ± 1.58 years)
Self-report measures:
• Childhood Socioeconomic Status Questionnaire
was developed to capture multiple aspects of
SES. Instructions required participants to provide
answers referring to " how things were while they
were growing up". Cronbach's alpha = .74. We
also investigated items clustering using PCA.
Table 1 shows the factor loadings after rotation.
• MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status wasused as a measure of current SES, reflecting
subjective perception of one's socioeconomic
status.
• Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS)
(Gratz & Roemer, 2008) assesses several
dimensions of emotion dysregulation, together
with a global measure. Participants rated how
often each of the 36 items applied to themselves,
on a scale from 0 (almost never) to 5 (almost
always). Cronbach's alpha = .85
Accessibility of community resources during
childhood significantly predicted a general measureof emotion regulation difficulties in adulthood
(β=-.18, p