Semester

Summer

Date of Graduation

2025

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Type

MS

College

Eberly College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Psychology

Committee Chair

Amy Gentzler

Committee Member

Nicholas Turiano

Committee Member

Amy Kennedy

Abstract

Anxiety is a growing issue in adolescents, with teens reporting worse and more severe symptoms in recent years (Kajastus et al., 2023; Solmi et al., 2022). There are several risk factors for developing anxiety symptoms, including cognitive, behavioral, and social factors. Effective emotion regulation (ER) has been shown to be helpful in decreasing anxiety symptom levels (Arbulu et al., 2023; Cho et al., 2019). A better understanding of precursors of ER could aid in prevention of anxiety. ER may stem from our personal beliefs about emotions (Ford et al., 2018; Schroder et al., 2015; Tamir et al., 2007) and to the attachment style one has with their parents (Blissett et al., 2006; Henschel et al., 2020). The present study examined the relationships between parental attachment, beliefs about emotions, and ER in relation to anxiety symptom levels in adolescents. This study tests several mediational pathways between these variables. It is hypothesized that differences in parental attachment will lead to different beliefs about emotions, which will influence ER and anxiety levels. Results indicated significant individual paths between variables (i.e., higher avoidant attachment with parents predicted greater emotion expression control beliefs, higher beliefs emotions should be controlled predicted greater reappraisal, greater use of reappraisal predicted lower anxiety). However, no significant indirect effects were found through the hypothesized paths. The findings of this study further research on emotion beliefs and is novel in its approach to include parental attachment as a predictor, particularly in an adolescent sample. Implications of these findings could include a different route in targeted interventions - specifically ones targeted at focusing on beliefs about the controllability of emotions, which could provide more effective application use of ER strategies like reappraisal.

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