emotion regulation scale

The Emotion Regulation Scale is a professional psychological measurement tool that has been tested for standardized reliability and validity and is used to quantify individual emotion regulation strategy preferences, ability levels and difficulties. It is by no means an interesting tool such as the "emotional IQ test" or "stress resistance self-test" circulated on the Internet. Currently, the mainstream application of the scale is divided into three major directions: ability assessment, difficulty screening, and adaptation to special groups. When used, it needs to match the scenario and be combined with actual interpretation. Direct judgment cannot be made based on the score alone.

Last week, a friend who works in corporate HR complained to me, saying that they conduct quarterly stress screenings for the sales team. To save time, I just searched for an "emotional regulation ability test" online. As a result, 80% of the entire team was judged to have "extremely poor emotional regulation ability." She was so scared that she almost applied. I gave the entire department a week-long team-building vacation, and I laughed after flipping through two pages of the test questions she found. It didn't even have the most basic criterion-related validity. The questions were all extremely subjective descriptions such as "Do you often quarrel with your colleagues?" and "Do you throw things when you are angry?" It would be strange if it could be measured accurately.

Currently the most widely used in academic circles and clinical settings is the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) developed by Gross' team. The original version only has two dimensions: cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression. It has a small number of questions and is quick to administer. It is basically used by companies for employee screening and universities for psychological testing of freshmen. Speaking of which, there has been ongoing controversy over this scale in the academic community. Western scholars feel that its dimensions are too coarsely divided and cannot cover more adjustment strategies such as "acceptance" and "diversion of attention". Domestic researchers believe that the original scale does not take into account the particularity of East Asian culture at all - what we often call "tolerance". "The situation is calm for a while" is not simply "expressive suppression". It also contains elements of taking the overall situation into consideration and actively adjusting expectations. Therefore, the Chinese version currently used in China is basically the Chinese version revised by Wang Li's team in 2007. The reliability is stable above 0.78, and it is much more suitable for Chinese people. I have taken the test myself several times, and the expressive suppression score is 1.2 standard deviations higher than the norm. I was puzzled at first, but later I realized that it was a professional habit acquired through consulting. You can't cry and scold along with the visitors, right? It's not "emotional depression" at all.

However, when I receive cases at university psychological counseling centers, I rarely rely solely on the ERQ for assessment, and most of them will add the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS). Unlike ERQ, which measures strategy preferences, DERS is specifically designed to find "blocking points" in adjustment: Are emotions rising and completely out of control? You know there's no need to feel bad, but you're stuck in it and can't get out? Is it because you are in too bad a mood and can't do normal things? Of course, there are many humanistic counselors who do not like to use this scale because they feel that it is too biased towards a pathological perspective. Highly sensitive people have low emotional thresholds and strong receptivity, and can easily be diagnosed with "difficulty in adjustment". However, this does not mean that they have a problem with their abilities. They just have stronger emotional reactions than ordinary people. On the contrary, they have stronger creativity and empathy. I previously received a visit from an art student whose DERS score was particularly high in emotional non-acceptance, but she said herself, “I just have to retain these sensitive emotions in order to be able to draw things, so why do I need to adjust?” ”Later, we didn’t worry about the scale score and just made plans according to her needs.

If the assessment target is a child under 18 years old, I usually switch to the Emotion Regulation Strategies Scale (ERSS), which is more suitable for adolescent behavior patterns. Not long ago, a boy in the second grade of junior high school was brought in by his mother for consultation. The mother insisted that the child "cannot control his emotions at all and slams the door at every turn." The ERQ test showed that his cognitive reappraisal score was actually higher than the norm for the same age group. Later, he switched to the ERSS and discovered that when he was wronged at school, he usually complained to good friends or played basketball for half an hour to vent his anger.

It's interesting to say that a while ago, a friend who makes a health APP asked me to authorize the scale, saying that he wanted to put it into the APP for users to do self-tests, but I refused directly. To put it bluntly, this thing is like a hospital blood test sheet. You can't just look at the high white blood cells to conclude that you are seriously ill, but you also need to combine the actual symptoms of fever and cough, right? A netizen previously sent me her self-assessment results, saying that her expressive inhibition score was too high and that she would suffer from depression sooner or later. After careful questioning, I found out that she was a primary school teacher and she couldn’t lose her temper with the students in class. A high score was entirely a professional requirement and was not a problem at all.

In the final analysis, the emotion regulation scale is just an auxiliary tool. Numbers are dead but people are alive. There is no need to label yourself as "emotionally unstable" or "poor in regulating ability" based on test results - after all, emotions cannot be completely explained by a few cold numbers.