The Difference Of Emotional Regulation In Mongolian And Han College Students

Emotional regulation plays an important role in both physical and mental health.It is a process in which individuals influence the emotions they have,when they have them,and how they experience and express them.In other words,emotional regulation refers to the process in which individuals exert influence on the occurrence,experience and expression of emotions.Gross' s theory of emotional regulation holds that there are two strategies for emotional regulation,which are cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression.Cognitive reappraisal occurs before emotional response,which is a strategy for individuals to adjust their emotions by changing their cognition of emotional events.Expression suppression occurs after emotional response,which is a strategy for individuals to reduce emotional experience by adjusting their own behavior or physiological response.Previous cross-cultural research found that culture causes different use of emotion regulation strategies,mainly in expression suppression strategy.In the individualistic cultural background of the West,people encourage and advocate the free expression of emotional experience.Unlike west culture background,the collectivist cultural background represented by the East,individuals do not encourage to express their emotions in public and may use expression suppression strategies more.At the same time,there are more cross-cultural studies on collectivism and individualism,and relatively few studies on subcultures.Therefore,the differences in the use of emotional regulation strategies among Mongolian and Han university students in Inner Mongolia were studied.This study takes Mongolian and Han university students in Inner Mongolia as the research object to discuss the current situation of the use of emotional regulation among them,as well as the cultural differences of expression suppression strategies in emotional regulation.The first study uses the questionnaire method,first reported the current situation of emotional regulation in Mongolian and Han university students.The results show that:(1)There is a difference in the choice of emotional regulation strategies among university students in Inner Mongolia,which shows that they prefer to choose cognitive reappraisal strategies to regulate their emotions.(2)There are significant differences in demographic variables between the two emotional regulation strategies of university students in Inner Mongolia,that is,gender and student origin.Male students used more expression suppression strategies than female students.Compared with students in pastoral areas,students in rural areas used more expression suppression strategies.(3)The second study is an experimental study.The subjects were 53 university students from Inner Mongolia.A 2×2×2 mixed experimental design was adopted,and the independent variables were nationality,social situation and emotional type.The results show that:(4)There are ethnic differences in the correlation between the use of emotional regulation strategies and emotional experience among college students in Inner Mongolia.The cognitive reappraisal strategy was negatively correlated with negative emotional experience in Han college students,but not in Mongolian.(5)There are significant differences in the frequency of expression suppression among college students after experiencing different types of emotions,which showed that they were more likely to use expression suppression strategies after experiencing negative emotions compared with experiencing positive emotions.(6)University students of different ethnic groups use different frequency of expression suppression after experiencing different emotions,which is reflected in that han students use more expression suppression strategies after experiencing negative emotions compared with Mongolian students,while Mongolian college students use more expression suppression strategies after experiencing positive emotions.(7)The frequency of expression suppression is different after experiencing different emotions in different social situations,which is manifested as more expression suppression strategies are used after experiencing negative emotions in different ethnic situations,while there is no difference in experiencing different types of emotions in the same ethnic situation.Therefore,there are cultural differences in the use of emotion regulation strategies in Mongolian and Han students.