8/18/2019 Bîlc Cioară Miu Emotions, 2015

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BABEŞ-BOLYAI UNIVERSITY

Childhood socioeconomic status and emotion regulation difficultiesMirela Bîlc1, Marius Cioar ă2, & Andrei C. Miu11Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, Department of Psychology, Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania2Department of Psychology, University of Oradea, Oradea, Romania

Abstract

This study investigated the relation between childhoodsocioeconomic status (SES) and adult emotion regulation.

Main findings indicated that early access to community

resources predicted emotion regulation difficulties in

adulthood, when controlling for the effects of age, sex and

current SES. No such effects were found for other 

indicators of childhood SES, such as parental education,

occupation, or family income.

Introduction

Aim

  Effects of SES were investigated in relation to a

particular class of intrapersonal resources, namely onhow individuals regulate their emotions.

  In light of the current findings, we hypothesized that

childhood socioeconomic status will impact adult

emotion regulation. Using a multilevel approach on

SES, we investigated effects of both community and

individual/familial SES on difficulties in emotion

regulation.

Methods

Results

Conclusions

  Low SES is associated with more depressive, anxious

and hostile symptoms, with this effect being only

partially explained by differences in stress exposure.

 Alternative hypotheses suggest that lower SES

individuals, living in scarce environments, developfewer resources to deal with stressors, resulting in

higher reactivity (Gallo & Matthews, 2003).

  Emotion regulation, refers to the process by which

individuals influence which emotions they have, when

they have them and how these are expressed

(Gross,1998, 2014). Difficulties in emotion regulation

are considered a core target in mental health

interventions (Aldao et. al., 2010; Werner & Gross,

2010).

  Children coming from "risky families", characterized by

conflicts, cold parenting and low SES, have various

deficits in emotion regulation (Repetti, Taylor, &

Seeman, 2002). Neuroimaging studies also report

atypical responses to emotional stimuli and reduced

activity in regions involved in regulating emotional

responses for adults with low childhood SES (Kim et

al., 2013; Taylor et. al., 2006).

  Neighborhood SES impacts school readiness,

academic achievement, but also behavioral and

emotional problems, after accounting for individual and

family characteristics (Leventhal & Brooks-Gunn,

2000).

  A twin study also showed that neighborhood

deprivation, as a specific form of shared environment

influence, has an impact on children s̀ behavioral

problems at age 2, above and beyond genetic factors

(Caspi et. al., 2000).

6th International conference on emotions, well-being and health, Tilburg, NL

Items   Human Capital Financial Capital Community Capital

Mother education .81   -.05 .04

Father education .83   -.03 .01

Mother occupation .75   .01 .02

Father occupation .73   .08 -.09

Family income .00 .98   -.00

 Access to education .01 .15 .70

 Access to medical services -.04 .03 .78

 Access to recreational resources .01 -.03 .80

Neighborhood safety .01 -.11 .75

Table 1

Factor Loadings for Principal Component Analysis with Promax Rotation

Note. Component loadings over .40 appear in bold

  Participants: N = 424 participants (370 women,aged 19.95 ± 1.58 years)

  Self-report measures:

• Childhood Socioeconomic Status Questionnaire

was developed to capture multiple aspects of 

SES. Instructions required participants to provide

answers referring to " how things were while they

were growing up". Cronbach's alpha = .74. We

also investigated items clustering using PCA.

Table 1 shows the factor loadings after rotation.

• MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status wasused as a measure of current SES, reflecting

subjective perception of one's socioeconomic

status.

• Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS)

(Gratz & Roemer, 2008) assesses several

dimensions of emotion dysregulation, together 

with a global measure. Participants rated how

often each of the 36 items applied to themselves,

on a scale from 0 (almost never) to 5 (almost

always). Cronbach's alpha = .85

  Accessibility of community resources during

childhood significantly predicted a general measureof emotion regulation difficulties in adulthood

(β=-.18, p