Intergenerational Emotion Dysregulation: Older Adolescent Negative Perception as a Moderator

Previous research has also shown that children learn emotion regulation through modeling their parents' behavior; however, little research has explored which factors influence how older children develop unique strategies to handle and express their emotions. The discrepancies between parent and adolescent emotion regulation strategies are not well understood but there is evidence to suggest that they may be due to vulnerability or protective factors within the child. The present study attempts to fill gaps in previous literature that lack assessment of interpersonal factors that may influence the intergenerational transmission of emotion regulation from parent to older child by assessing the impact of older adolescents' perceptions of their parents' emotion regulation strategies on the relationship between parent and child emotion regulation outcomes. Older adolescents completed measures of parental emotion regulation, parent and peer attachment, perception of parental emotion regulation, and difficulties in emotion regulation. The results suggest that older adolescents with parents who have emotion regulation difficulties might be able to reduce their own emotion dysregulation if they have developed negative perceptions of their parents' maladaptive emotion regulation strategies and have expressed desire to not handle emotions in the same ways as their parents. Thus, these results contribute to our understanding of interpersonal factors that may influence the intergenerational transmission of emotion regulation difficulties.