Different Goal-directed Children's Emotion Regulation Strategies

One hundred and twenty-four children took part in our study. They have different goal orientations (such as performance goal and master goal), came from 4th, 5th and 6th grade, and aged from 9 to 14. In this study, we use four stories with emotional themes to compare the strategies the children would use to regulate the emotions of happy, sad, angry and afraid in the ways of questionnaire and interview. The purpose of this study was to examine whether there were some differences between the children who are either performance goal or master goal on the accuracy of the primary emotion, the intensity of the primary emotion, the total number of strategies chosen, and the diversity of strategies were chosen. The specific strategies included: (1) Distraction/Avoidance, (2) Aggression, (3) Venting, (4) Seeking Support, (5) Instrumental, (6) Cognitive Restructuring, (7) Dont Know. The findings showed: (1) although there were no significant differences in the intensity, the total number of strategies chosen for every primary emotion (happy, sad, angry, afraid), the two groups were significantly different on the accuracy of the happy emotion. (2) The specific strategies the two groups used for every primary emotion were not the same, some were significantly different. (3) It was necessary to study the two groups' strategies for each emotion separately.