Latent profiles of intrinsic interpersonal emotion regulation in Chinese children: Links to psychological adjustment.

Children use interpersonal emotion regulation (IER) with parents and friends to manage their emotions, which impacts their psychological adjustment. However, the distinct patterns of IER with parents and friends and their effects on children's psychological adjustment are not well understood. The present study employs latent profile analysis to identify unique patterns of intrinsic IER with parents and friends among a cohort of Chinese children (N = 1,678, Mage = 10.42 years; SD = 1.2 years; 50.9% boys) and explores the associations of those subgroups with children's psychological adjustment (including depressive symptoms, anxiety symptoms, general self-worth, and life satisfaction). The findings revealed six distinct intrinsic IER profiles: extremely low IER (2.5%), low IER (16.2%), average IER (40.2%), high parent-low friend IER (4.2%), low parent-high friend IER (3.9%), and high IER (33.0%). Children in higher grades and girls were more likely to belong to the low parent-high friend IER profile compared to their counterparts. Children in high IER with both parents and friends reported the best psychological adjustment. In contrast, children categorized in the extremely low IER, low IER, and low parent-high friend IER profiles displayed poorer psychological adjustment relative to average IER and high IER profiles. These findings highlight the importance of examining the diversity of intrinsic IER patterns with parents and friends to gain a comprehensive understanding of children's psychological adjustment. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).