Interpersonal emotion regulation and its relationship with the Big Five personality traits across two age groups: adolescents and adults.

BACKGROUND

Interpersonal emotion regulation (IER) refers to the use of social interactions to manage emotional experiences and plays an important role in psychological functioning across the lifespan. Although personality traits are known to influence emotion regulation, less is known about age-related differences in the use of IER strategies and how these strategies are associated with the Big Five personality traits among adolescents and adults. This study aimed to compare IER strategies between these two age groups and to examine their associations with personality traits within each group.

METHODS

This descriptive cross-sectional study included 634 participants, comprising 317 adolescents aged 11-18 years and 317 adults aged 19-65 years. IER was assessed using the IER Questionnaire. Personality traits were measured with age-appropriate instruments: the Big Five Questionnaire for Children for adolescents and the NEO Five-Factor Inventory for adults. Multivariate analysis of variance was used to examine age-group differences in IER strategies. Pearson correlation analyses were conducted separately for adolescents and adults to investigate associations between personality traits and IER strategies.

RESULTS

The findings revealed a statistically significant but small overall effect of age group on IER strategies. Follow-up analyses indicated that adolescents reported higher use of the enhancing positive affect strategy compared to adults, while no significant age differences were observed for perspective taking, soothing, or social modeling. Distinct patterns of associations between personality traits and IER strategies emerged across age groups. Among adolescents, neuroticism, openness to experience, agreeableness, and conscientiousness were positively associated with most strategies. Among adults, neuroticism and openness were inversely associated with several strategies, whereas conscientiousness was positively associated with all IER dimensions. Agreeableness was associated with lower use of some direct interpersonal strategies in adults.

CONCLUSIONS

Although age-related differences in the overall use of IER strategies were modest, meaningful developmental differences were observed in the ways personality traits were related to these strategies. These results underscore the importance of considering both developmental stage and personality dispositions when conceptualizing and designing interventions aimed at improving IER.