Emotion Regulation and Academic Stress in Adolescents: The Role of Cognitive Reappraisal and Expressive Suppression

Academic stress is a leading contributor to deteriorating mental health in adolescents, yet limited evidence examines this using adolescent-specific validated measures. This study addresses this gap by testing the relationship between cognitive reappraisal (CR) and expressive suppression (ES) and perceived academic stress in adolescents. It was hypothesised that greater use of expressive suppression and lower use of cognitive reappraisal would be associated with higher academic stress.
A cross-sectional design was employed with 63 participants aged 10 to 19 (M = 13.70, SD = 2.30; 63.49% female) and recruited via volunteer sampling. Academic stress was measured using the Educational Stress Scale for Adolescents (ESSA), and emotion regulation was measured using the Emotional Regulation Questionnaire for Children and Adolescents (ERQ-CA). Pearson correlations and a hierarchical multiple regression were conducted.
Expressive suppression significantly correlated with total ESSA score (r = .364, p = .003) and predicted academic stress above and beyond demographics (β = 0.987, p = .014; ΔR² = .099, p = .016). Cognitive reappraisal did not significantly predict academic stress (β = −0.551, p = .132).
Expressive suppression consistently predicted greater academic stress, particularly despondency. The null result for cognitive reappraisal may reflect developmental constraints implied in the Dual Systems Model (Steinberg, 2008), where a sample's young mean age may limit the effectiveness of the use of cognitive reappraisal. These findings contribute to the limited literature on emotional regulation and academic stress and provide information for the clinical and educational interventions aimed at reducing academic stress in adolescents.