The Relationship Between Attachment And Emotion Regulation In The Elderly:The Mediating Role Of Social Support

Emotional regulation exists in the occurrence of emotion. Different regulation strategies appear during the different stages of the emotional occurrence. Emotional regulation strategies have significance on personal management of emotion and fitness both physically and mentally. Previous studies have found out that the attachment, which takes shape in early age and develops lifelong, will influence the usage of personal emotional regulation. Many studies show that emotion regulation of the elder is quite different from the young’s. This study starts from the view of attachment and then analyze the usage of cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression of the elder, and take social support into consideration as a mediator of the two. The study chose elder people as participants in Chongqing province and surveyed with questionnaires. The result shows that:A.For elder people, compare to male, female has lower avoidance and more use of cognitive reappraisal strategy.B.The avoidance declines with the ascendance of age. The score on attachment avoidance of the people at age of 55-59 is significantly higher than 80-88. And the score on attachment anxiety of the elder people who have had only primary education is significantly lower than those who have had high school or college education.C.According to the result, the elder between the age of 80-88 use more cognitive reappraisal strategy than the 60-69 and 70-79.D.The level of social support of elder people with different attachment styles is significantly different. The level of social support of secure elder is significantly higher than insecure elder。E.Compared to the elder with secure、fear and preoccupied attachment,the dismissive elder use lesser cognitive reappraisal strategy, but more expressive suppression strategy.F.The social support show significant negative correlation with attachment avoidance and anxiety. The social support show significant positive correlation with cognitive reappraisal,but negative correlation with expressive suppression.G.Attachment avoidance show significant negative correlation with cognitive reappraisal, but positive correlation with expressive suppression. Social support completely mediates the relation between attachment avoidance and cognitive reappraisal、expressive suppression. Improving social support level can make high avoidant individuals use more cognitive reappraisal strategy and less expression suppression strategy.H.Attachment anxiety is positive related to cognitive reappraisal,and isn’t related to expressive suppression. Social support shows “suppressing effects” on the relation between attachment anxiety and emotion regulation. Social support partly suppress the relation between attachment anxiety and cognitive reappraisal, completely suppress the relation between attachment anxiety and cognitive reappraisal. Improving social support level can make high anxious individuals use more expression suppression strategy and less cognitive reappraisal strategy.The study analyzes the influence of attachment to the use of cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression. The construction of the model clarifies the relationship between the variables and enriches the research practice of attachment and emotional regulation theories, thus better help the elder use emotional regulation strategies in the right ways, improve the ability of emotion regulation functional defect individual to better manage emotion,and provide theoretical support for clinical intervention and psychological counseling.