Layla Fan L&S Social Sciences
Dynamics of Emotion Malleability Beliefs: Daily Regulation & Distress
Emotions play an essential role in mental health and overall well-being, and adaptive emotion regulation helps people deal with the challenges of everyday life. Emotion beliefs have been shown to influence motivation to attempt emotion regulation and emotional functioning. Emotion malleability beliefs represent the extent to which individuals perceive emotions as changeable, dynamic, or fixed, static, uncontrollable entities. Studies suggested that more malleable emotional beliefs were associated with lower levels of psychological distress, such as stress, depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, and negative affect. Among individuals with high anxiety levels, this effect appears to be less prominent. As emotion regulation changes over time, a question arises: are these beliefs traits or temporary states? Additionally, it is valuable to investigate potential cultural variations in the perception of emotions. I aim to employ ecological momentary assessment, gathering daily self-reported survey data from diverse populations to explore cultural influences and the moderating effect of trait anxiety on the relationship between emotion malleability beliefs and mental health.
Message To Sponsor
I would like to sincerely thank the sponsor, Wishek, for supporting my summer research on the dynamics of emotional beliefs and regulation. This experience taught me how important beliefs are in helping college students manage stress in daily life. Independently recruiting participants, running studies, and analyzing data have also built my confidence as I prepare for graduate school. After completing my honors thesis, I plan to expand this into cross-cultural research to help people from diverse backgrounds cope with their emotions and daily challenges.