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Adjustment to the college environment is fraught with academic, social, and financial challenges that elicit strong and fluctuating emotions requiring effective regulation for optimal functioning. Moreover, the new-found independence of college life provides opportunities for risk taking of all types, both maladaptive and adaptive. The current study explores both emotion regulation and risk-taking as predictors of college adaptation, and the potential mediating role of risk-taking in the pathway between emotional regulation and adjustment. Self-reports of emotion regulation, college adaptation, and risk-taking were administered online to 93 female and male college students. Adaptive emotion regulation strategies predicted better college adjustment, and difficulties with regulation were associated with lower levels of adjustment. Emotion regulation challenges predicted a greater likelihood of taking dangerous health and safety risks, and positive regulation strategies predicted taking more adaptive social and recreational risks. Emotion regulation difficulties also were associated with a greater likelihood of ethical risk taking, and this type of risky behavior predicted decreased college adaptation. However, ethical risk taking did not serve as a significant mediator in the pathway. The findings that both emotion regulation and ethical risk taking predict college adaptation may help inform interventions that can facilitate a healthy adjustment to college.
The transition to college is difficult and stressful for students (Leary & DeRosier, 2012), and elicits a range of strong emotions that require regulation for optimal functioning in this new environment. Effective emotion regulation strategies assist with coping and reducing stress to promote resiliency, and thus improve retention rates in the collegiate setting (Buckner et al., 2003; Modecki et al., 2017). Emerging adults' reactions to the stress of adjusting to life as a college student (Dyson & Renk, 2006) can include emotion dysregulation and risk-taking behaviors. Because emotion dysregulation may be linked to risk-taking behavior (Gross & John 2003; Panno et al., 2013; Weiss et al., 2015), it is of interest to examine risk-taking as a possible mediator in the pathway between emotion regulation and college adjustment.
Emotion regulation refers to how an individual achieves appropriate, socially acceptable emotional responses to situations, and involves strategies to reach these goals (Gross, 1998). According to Thompson (1991), emotion regulation is responsible for examining, assessing, and modifying emotional reactions to environmental stimuli. Over time and with practice, the...