Cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression: Links to racial-ethnic discrimination and adjustment among Latino/a and Asian-heritage college students

Abstract

Objective: We examined whether two key emotion regulation strategies, cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression, moderated the relations between discrimination (i.e., foreigner objectification and general denigration) and adjustment.

Methods: Participants were U.S. Latino/a and Asian-heritage college students (N = 1,279, 67% female, 72% U.S. born) from the Multi-Site University Study of Identity and Culture (MUSIC). Students completed online self-report surveys in 2009.

Results: Multi-group path analysis demonstrated that a fully constrained model fit well for both Latino/a and Asian-heritage student data. The results showed that with increasing levels of denigration (but not foreigner objectification), the combination of lower cognitive reappraisal and higher expressive suppression was related to greater depressive symptoms, anxiety, and aggression.

Conclusions: Our findings highlight the importance of examining multiple emotion regulation strategies simultaneously-considering what strategies are available to individuals and in what combination they are used-to understand how best to deal with negative emotions resulting from experiencing discrimination.

Keywords: Asian American; College students; Discrimination; Emotion regulation; Latino/a.