Emotion Regulation Questionnaire ERQ Chinese revised version Wang Li

"Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) Chinese Revised Version (Wang Li Version)" is a measurement tool based on the emotion regulation process model proposed by Gross in 2007 by Wang Li's team at the Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, to locally revise the original 10-question ERQ. It is the current domestic emotion measurement tool. It is one of the standardized scales with the widest application range and the most sufficient evidence of reliability and validity in regulation-related research and practice. It is suitable for the assessment of the tendency to use emotion regulation strategies for the general population over 16 years old and for groups with clinical psychological disorders. It core measures the two classic dimensions of cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression.

As early as around 2000, some scholars in China directly translated and used the original ERQ, but the measured results often failed to meet the standard factor loading. When I was a graduate student, I helped my tutor organize the early scale data. I also saw the graduation data of a university in 2005. The correlation coefficient between the two dimensions of the literal translation of the ERQ actually reached 0.7. It is obvious that the translation of the items does not conform to the expression habits of the Chinese people. No one can distinguish the difference between "regulating emotions" and "not showing emotions". When Wang Li's team was making revisions, they successively found more than 20 clinical psychology experts and Chinese-speaking international students for cross-cultural debugging, and changed the more blunt expressions in the original version, such as "I suppress my emotional expression" to "I control my emotions and do not express them" that is more in line with Chinese speaking habits. They also successively studied in ordinary universities. Reliability and validity tests were conducted among three groups: students, community residents, and patients with post-traumatic stress disorder. The data in the revised report at that time showed that the internal consistency reliability of the cognitive reappraisal dimension reached 0.85, and the expressive suppression also reached 0.77. All the fit indices of the confirmatory factor analysis met the standards, which is equivalent to issuing a common domestic "pass" to this scale.

I used this version of the scale when I screened the emotional health of employees for an Internet company two years ago, and collected more than 1,200 pieces of valid data. Finally, the average expression suppression score for the two front-end positions of customer service and sales reached 5.2 points (the scale is a 7-point scale, and the higher the score, the more frequently this strategy is used), which is nearly 2 points higher than that of the back-end technical positions. During the follow-up interviews, many sales staff mentioned that "you can't lose your temper when you encounter nitpicking customers, you can only hold it in yourself", which was completely consistent with the results measured by the scale. Later, when we did the emotion management workshop, we also specially added expressive writing exercises to colleagues in these two positions to help them relieve their suppressed emotions. To be honest, I have been working on psychological assessment for almost 8 years, and I have at least 20 or 30 emotional scales. The Wangli version of the ERQ was the first tool I thought of when doing large-scale preliminary screening. The 10 questions can be filled out in two to three minutes. It is rare for respondents to abandon the answer midway because there are too many questions, and the data quality is stable.

But having said that, not everyone recognizes this version of the scale. I know several friends who work in local cultural psychology and often complain, saying that the ERQ is essentially based on the emotional model of Western individualistic cultures. The acceptance-type adjustment of "tolerating the calm for a while" commonly used by the Chinese, the cathartic adjustment of complaining to relatives and friends, and even the fatalistic adjustment of "sometimes there must be something in life" are not covered at all in this version of the scale. It always feels a bit "out of step" when used to study local emotions. Some clinical colleagues have also mentioned that this scale can only measure whether you use cognitive reappraisal. It cannot measure whether you use a positive reappraisal of "Although this thing is bad, but I can learn something" or a negative reappraisal of "I am just unlucky and deserve to encounter this kind of thing." The latter will actually aggravate emotional problems, and you cannot tell the difference just by looking at the scale score. In recent years, scholars have successively expanded and revised Wang Li's version and added many questions from the local dimension. However, it is not as popular as this version yet.

I once met an undergraduate student studying psychology who came to me and said that in order to save time when doing his final exam, he deleted 3 of the 10 questions in the Wang Li version of the ERQ. As a result, the reliability of the collected data was only 0.48, which was completely useless. This is really not meant to scare people. Every question in this version of the scale was retained through repeated item analysis. For example, "When I want to feel more positive emotions, I will change my view on things" in the cognitive reappraisal dimension. This question had the highest degree of discrimination when the item analysis was done. If you delete it casually, the reliability and validity of the entire dimension will definitely be lost. If you really want to change the question, you will have to do the reliability and validity test again, otherwise the results will not be tenable at all.

Looking back now, it is not unreasonable that Wangli's version of ERQ has been popular for so many years. After all, the operation is simple and the data is stable. It can be used whether it is for psychological screening of college freshmen, stress survey of corporate employees, or emotion-related research on small samples. Of course, there is no need to regard it as the "gold standard". If we really need to conduct more in-depth emotion research or clinical case evaluation, and use it together with local emotion regulation scales and semi-structured interview data, the results will be more reliable.