emotion regulation scale

There is currently no "standard answer version" of emotion regulation scales applicable to all scenarios. The results of all scales can only be used as reference indicators of emotional state and cannot be directly equivalent to the conclusion of emotion regulation ability, let alone the basis for diagnosis of mental illness.

When I was working as an assistant at a university psychological center, a junior boy rushed in with his cell phone in hand, his face turned pale, and said that he had just taken an emotional regulation scale online, and the results showed "severe deficits in emotional regulation ability." He didn't even dare to take the final exam for fear that he would have an emotional breakdown and cause trouble. I took his cell phone and looked at it. The one he made was a screening scale specially used for patients with clinically diagnosed anxiety disorders. The norm is originally a pathological group. For ordinary people to take the test, low scores are too normal. Many people’s misunderstanding of the emotion regulation scale is essentially using the wrong ruler to measure things.

The most commonly used classic scale in the academic world is the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) developed by the Gross team at Stanford University. It has only 10 questions in total and measures two core dimensions: cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression. In human terms, when you encounter bad things, are you used to thinking from another angle, or are you used to holding back and not talking about it? Because this scale has a small number of questions and high reliability and validity (to put it bluntly, it means accuracy and stability), it is now basically used in cross-cultural research and large-sample group surveys. If you look for any formal psychological self-assessment platform, you will most likely see a simplified version of it.

Of course, this scale is not without controversy. Scholars who do local psychology research have long mentioned that the two dimensions summarized in the Western context always feel like wearing shoes that don't fit when applied to Chinese people. For example, we often talk about the patience of "taking a step back and the world is brighter", the catharsis of complaining to best friends, and even the passive acceptance of "forget it and let it go". These are commonly used adjustment strategies by Chinese people, and are not covered at all in ERQ. Therefore, in the past few years, many domestic teams have developed local scales. For example, the local emotional regulation scale launched by the Beijing Normal University team in 2021 added the dimensions of reasonable catharsis, acceptance and calming, and the measured results are more in line with the actual state of ordinary people.

If clinical screening is done, another set of tools is used, such as the Difficult Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS), which has 36 questions and can be used to measure in detail whether you are unable to recognize your own emotions, or you know that your emotions are wrong but cannot find a suitable way to regulate them, or you clearly have a method but you just can't control yourself. However, this kind of scale is generally not put online for ordinary people to self-test. Firstly, there are too many questions and it is tiring to do it. Secondly, the dimensions are too detailed. Without professional interpretation, ordinary people can easily become anxious when they see a low score on a certain dimension.

The academic world is actually very noisy now. Scholars who do quantitative research believe that the scale is highly standardized and can collect data in batches, making it highly efficient whether conducting surveys or preliminary clinical screenings. ； Scholars who do qualitative research believe that emotions are inherently very personal and very situation-dependent. If you are scolded by your boss and throw a pillow at home, that is conditioning, and if you laugh in front of a customer when you feel pressured and get angry, it is also conditioning. How is it possible to judge "good or bad" with just a few fixed questions? I also encountered this situation when I was working as an assistant: There was a postpartum mother whose expressive inhibition score was extremely high when measured by the ERQ. According to the norm, she had "poor emotional regulation habits." However, after talking with her, I found out that she was afraid that her mood swings would be too big to scare her one-month-old baby, so she deliberately controlled it. In this situation, it would be really ridiculous if you directly took the results of the scale and said she had a problem.

I usually recommend self-test questions to people who come for consultation. I usually ask clearly about their needs first: If they are just curious and want to test for fun, I will give a simplified version of ERQ with 10 questions. After completing it, you don’t have to worry about the score. A high cognitive rescore shows that you are used to thinking about things from different perspectives. High expression inhibition is not a disadvantage. People in the service industry who have high expression inhibition can get into less trouble.； If you feel that your emotions have been blocked in the past half month and cannot be relieved, you will be given a more complex scale, and you will definitely be vaccinated in advance: the score is a reference, and the content we will talk about later will be accurate.

In the final analysis, the emotion regulation scale is just a tool after all. Just like the scale at home. If it measures two pounds heavier, it may not necessarily mean that you are fat. It may be that you just drank a large glass of water, or the scale itself may not be stable. If you really want to care about your emotional state, instead of staring at the score on the scale and wondering back and forth, it is better to spend more time feeling it: when you encounter something unhappy recently, are you able to let go of your emotions smoothly, or is it always stuck in your chest and you can't even sleep well? The latter is your own, most accurate "emotion scale".