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Abstract
The importance of individual emotion regulation behaviors is well documented, but further work is needed to explore the impacts of differences in profiles of strengths and weaknesses across multiple emotion regulation skills. The present study targets this growth area for the field, utilizing a contemporary, skills-focused model of emotion regulation to identify and assess person-profiles of emotion regulation skills among a sample of senior undergraduates, a population for whom emotion regulation may be particularly important. A large sample of college seniors (N = 551) provided self-report data during the 2016-17 and 2017-18 academic years, including demographics, two measures of emotion regulation skills, and outcome measures across the domains of emotional adjustment, mental health, interpersonal functioning, future planning, and overall wellbeing. Results supported the structure and validity of the model used in the present study and identified five groups of senior undergraduates who displayed distinct emotion regulation skill-profiles, including four groups with relatively uniform skill-levels ranging from “proficient” to “limited” and a fifth displaying substantial variability in proficiency among emotion regulation skills. The profile groups differed significantly in their report of psychosocial outcomes, with those reporting broad proficiency across skill-areas experiencing the most desirable outcomes across domains. Findings underscore the importance of focusing on person-profiles of emotion regulation skills, as this perspective illuminated substantial implications of observed differences across people. Future research should replicate and extend the findings of this study through further use of person-centered approaches.