College Students' Regulatory Emotional Self-efficacy And Its Intervention With Mindfulness Training

Regulatory emotional self-efficacy, beliefs individuals hold about their capacity to exert control over their emotional regulation, has been a common and hot issue both in the study of emotional regulation and sense of self-efficacy. Foreign previous studies in regulatory emotional self-efficacy almost focus on examining its traits and the relationship between it and other senses of self-efficacy, delinquency, depression, subject well-being, et al.. The results show regulatory emotional self-efficacy is a key variable to emotional regulation and can exert influences on behaviors and health through its affect on emotional regulation. Domestic studies on the issue now are just limited to the introduction of its theory and some empirical research checkings. Reviewing all the studies, there are some aspects needing to go into: the measurement still doesn't cover enough kinds of emotions, more inland empirical researches are necessary, the exploration of intervention to regulatory emotional self-efficacy is also very important. The present study had just made effort on those aspects.The present study contains three parts:Study 1 developed the College Students' Regulatory Emotional Self-efficacy scale. Based on the Regulatory Emotional Self-efficacy Scales of 2008, items to measure fear was considered. After the Exploratory Factor Analysis, the reliability and validity test, which includes the Confirmatory Factor Analysis, a scale with 17 items was formed which satisfies the psychometrics requirements.Study 2 examined the traits of college students with the College Students' Regulatory Emotional Self-efficacy scale developed in Study 1 to find if there is any significant difference in gender, discipline, grade and region.Study 3 did an intervention to college students with Mindfulness Training which lasted for one month. Significant differences appeared between the pretest scores and the posttest scores in the experimental group. However, no such significant differences showed in the control group.Conclusions got are as follows: 1. The College Students' Regulatory Emotional Self-efficacy scale with 17 items contains 5 first-order factors: self-efficacy in expressing positive emotions, self-efficacy in managing despondency/distress, self-efficacy in managing interpersonal fear, self-efficacy in managing in environmental fear, and self-efficacy in managing frustration/irritation. The scale satisfies the psychometrics requirements and can be a tool to examine college students' regulatory emotional self-efficacy.2. Gender and discipline differences in regulatory emotional self-efficacy were found among college students. Girls showed higher sense of self-efficacy in self-efficacy in expressing positive affect than boys did. In self-efficacy in managing in environmental fear and self-efficacy in managing frustration/irritation and the total regulatory emotional self-efficacy, boys showed higher sense of self-efficacy than girls did. The related conclusion must be used carefully because of the gender bias. The Arts showed higher sense of self-efficacy in self-efficacy in expressing positive affect than the Sciences did. In self-efficacy in managing despondency/distress and self-efficacy in managing interpersonal and environmental fear and the total regulatory emotional self-efficacy, the Sciences showed higher sense of self-efficacy than the Arts did.There were no significant grade and region differences in regulatory emotional self-efficacy among college students. However, some aspects need to be paid attention: grade difference in self-efficacy in managing frustration/irritation was found, and sense of self-efficacy of Grade 2 were higher than Grade 1's and Grade 3's; The related conclusion must be used carefully because of the grade bias. Region difference in self-efficacy in managing interpersonal fear was found, students from cities showed higher sense of self-efficacy than those from villages did.3. Mindfulness Training had a positive affect on College Students' Regulatory Emotional Self-efficacy, especially on self-efficacy in managing despondency/distress, self-efficacy in managing interpersonal and environmental fear. Mindfulness Training had some certain positive influence on self-efficacy in expressing positive affect and self-efficacy in managing frustration/irritation.