Cloninger's TCI Associations with Adaptive and Maladaptive Emotion Regulation Strategies

Background: Cognitive emotion regulation plays a crucial role in psychopathology, resilience and well-being by regulating response to stress situations. However, the relationship between personality and adaptive and maladaptive regulation has not been sufficiently examined.

Methods: Adaptive and maladaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies of 247 university students were measured using the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ) and their temperament and character characteristics were analyzed with the Temperament and Character Inventory-Revised Short (TCI-RS). Two-step hierarchical multiple regression analyses were used to analyze whether TCI-RS explains the use of adaptive and maladaptive cognitive emotion regulation strategies. The latent classes of cognitive emotion regulation strategies were extracted with Latent Class Analysis (LCA) and significant differences in the subscales of CERQ and TCI-RS were examined with Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) and Profile Analysis after controlling for sex and age.

Results: The two-step hierarchical multiple regression model using the seven TCI-RS subscales explained 32.30% of the adaptive and 41.70% of the maladaptive CERQ subscale scores when sex and age were introduced in the first step as covariates. As for temperament, Novelty Seeking (NS) and Persistence (PS) were pivotal for adaptive and Harm Avoidance (HA) and PS for maladaptive CERQ total scores. In addition, the character traits Self-Directedness (SD) and Cooperativeness (CO) were critical for high adaptive and low maladaptive CERQ scores. Four latent emotion regulation classes were confirmed through LCA, and distinct TCI-RS profiles were found. The temperament trait HA and character trait SD were significantly different among the four latent emotion regulation classes.

Discussion: This study demonstrated that SD and CO are related to cognitive emotion regulation strategies along with psychological health and well-being, and that PS exhibits dualistic effects when combined with NS or HA on response to stressful situations. The importance of developing mature character represented by higher SD and CO in regard to mental health and its clinical implementation was discussed.