Emotion Malleability Beliefs Affect Subjective Well-being Among University Students

Previous studies have confirmed the influence of emotion malleability beliefs on various mental diseases.Few studies have focused on the influence of emotion malleability beliefs on subjective well-being,and these studies are almost completed in the context of western culture.Under the background of Chinese culture,this study investigated the influence of college students' emotion malleability beliefs on subjective well-being,and the mediating effect of cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression.In the first study,600 students from three universities in Lanzhou were tested by the Implicit Beliefs about Emotion Scale,the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire,the Satisfaction with Life scale,and the Positive and Negative Affect Scale.The proportion of the number of incremental and entity theorists under the background of Chinese culture was investigated,and the relationships among emotion malleability beliefs,emotion regulation strategies and subjective well-being were analyzed.The results showed that:(1)college students' emotional malleability beliefs positively predicted subjective well-being;(2)cognitive reappraisal and expression suppression partially mediated the relationship between emotion malleability beliefs and subjective well-being,respectively,in which emotion malleability beliefs positively predicted cognitive reappraisal and cognitive reappraisal positively predicted subject well-being,while emotion malleability beliefs positively predicted expressive suppression and expressive suppression negatively predicted subjective well-being.In the second study,in-depth interviews were used to provide the 11 participants with a situation of causing negative emotions,asking them to answer relevant questions,and further exploring the ways of emotion regulation of the emotional incremental theorists.The results showed that compared with the emotion entity theorists,the emotion incremental theorists actively used various emotion regulation strategies,including cognitive reappraisal,expressive suppression and expressive catharsis.Through the quantitative and qualitative research above,the main conclusions are as follows:(1)College students' emotion malleability beliefs significantly predicts subjective well-being,and emotion incremental theorists have higher subjective well-being than entity theorists.(2)Cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression mediate the relationship between emotion malleability beliefs and subjective well-being,respectively.Emotion incremental theorists have more use of cognitive reappraisal than entity theorists,so they have higher subjective well-being;emotion incremental theorists have more use of expressive suppression than entity theorists,so their subjective well-being is reduced to a certain extent.(3)In the face of negative emotions,emotion incremental theorists actively use various emotion regulation strategies of antecedent-focused and respond-focused to regulate their emotions.These results suggest that emotion malleability beliefs have an important impact on subjective well-being,and that emotion malleability beliefs may have different effects on emotion regulation strategies for Chinese compared with western people,and that the intervention of emotion malleability beliefs may improve subjective well-being.