| Negative emotions resulting from drug withdrawal are prevalent amongrecovering drug users/abusers, and such experiences could lead to relapse. Individualsexperiencing chronic negative emotions are more susceptible to substance abuseissues in general. Furthermore, relapse among abstinent drug abusers caused byprevailing negative emotions during drug withdrawal suggest that abusers relapse as away to cope with negative emotions manifesting from withdrawal symptoms.Recently, researchers have explored relationships among coping styles, emotionregulation, and drug abuse. Wong et al. found that individuals with positive copingstyles rarely experience drug abuse issues. However, little research has focused onrelationships among regulatory emotional self-efficacy, emotion regulation strategies,and abstinent drug abusers’ emotional experience. Regulatory emotional self-efficacyis regarded as beliefs that individuals hold regarding their capacity to exert controlover the events that affect their emotional state. According to Caprara et al., positiveregulatory emotional self-efficacy could help individuals sufficiently deal withstressful situations, increase subjective well-being, and modulate depression, shyness,antisocial behavior, criminal behavior, and drug abuse. Additionally, compared withpeople who doubt their capabilities, individuals who have positive emotionalself-efficacy tend to choose efficient emotion regulation strategies and are lessbothered by negative emotions.The present study focused on the influence of regulatory emotional self-efficacyon emotional experience among abstinent drug abusers. Subjects were male abstinentdrug abusers20~56years old (M=35.20, SD=8.15). The Scale of RegulatoryEmotional Self-Efficacy (SRESE), Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ), andThe Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) were used to examine theinfluence of regulatory emotional self-efficacy on emotional experience. Resultsshowed that:(1)Positive Regulatory Emotional Self-efficacy positively correlated withPositive Emotional Experience, Self-efficacy in Managing Negative Affectnegatively correlated with Negative Emotional Experience, and Regulatory Emotional Self-efficacy was positively correlated with the frequency of using CognitiveReappraisal.(2)Cognitive Reappraisal had a partial mediating effect on Positive RegulatoryEmotional Self-efficacy and Positive Emotional Experience. |
