A Helping Hand Isn’t Always So Helpful: Parental Autonomy Support Moderates the Effectiveness of Interpersonal Emotion Regulation for Emerging Adults

Abstract

The current study examined parental autonomy support in relation to the quality of youths’ interpersonal emotion regulation (IER) experiences with parents. 194 emerging adult college students ( M age = 19.6 years; 52.1% women) recounted a recent instance of receiving IER from a parent. Youth reported on their parent’s IER behaviors (emotional responsiveness and cognitive support), the perceived effectiveness of the IER, who initiated it, and how autonomy supportive their parent typically was. As expected, parental autonomy support moderated the relation between IER and its perceived effectiveness, such that at higher levels of support, parental emotional responsiveness and cognitive support related to higher perceived IER effectiveness. Likewise, in conditions of low autonomy support, youth perceived unsolicited IER to be less effective than did youth who sought the support. Autonomy support likely plays a meaningful role in the effectiveness of various IER processes, thus furthering our understanding of emerging adults’ socioemotional development.