Examining the interplay of emotion regulation strategies, social stress, and gender in predicting life satisfaction of emerging adults

Previous research has consistently shown the importance of emotion regulation in human development, but little work has investigated the synergistic effects of dispositional and situational factors on how emotion regulation works. Guided by a recent framework that proposes emotion regulation as a combination of person, situation, and strategy (Dore, Silvers, & Ochsner, 2016), this study examined the three-way interaction effects of gender (male, female), social stress (low, moderate, high levels), and emotion regulation strategies (reappraisal, suppression) on life satisfaction in emerging adults. Using self-report survey data (n = 353), significant three-way interaction effects were found. Specifically, positive association between cognitive reappraisal and life satisfaction was significant for both genders across all stress levels, except at low stress level for males. As the stress level increased, the magnitude of such association decreased for females but increased for males. In contrast, the association between expressive suppression and life satisfaction was not significant for both genders across all stress levels, except at high stress level for males where suppression had a significant positive relation with life satisfaction. Findings demonstrated the differential effects of reappraisal and suppression on life satisfaction across gender and social stress levels.