The Relationship Between Emotion Malleability Beliefs, Emotion Regulation and Adolescent Social Anxiety Symptoms: An Actor–Partner Independence Model of Parent–Adolescent Dyads

Emerging evidence suggests that emotion malleability beliefs are associated with adolescents’ emotion regulation and social interactions. However, it is unclear how this association is impacted by family interaction, which plays a crucial role in adolescent emotional development. The present study used Actor-Partner Interdependence Mediation Models (APIMeMs) to examine how parents’ and adolescents’ emotion malleability beliefs are linked to their own and each other’s emotion regulation (cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression) in parent-adolescent dyads and how the interdependence is related to adolescents’ social anxiety symptoms. Data were collected from 493 parent-adolescent dyads in China (Mage = 14.82 years, SD = 0.45; 50.71% girls; 80.32% mothers). Results showed that both parents’ and adolescents’ emotion malleability beliefs were associated with their own and each other’s use of cognitive reappraisal. For expressive suppression, only actor effects were significant, such that parents’ and adolescents’ emotion malleability beliefs were related to their own use of expressive suppression. Moreover, adolescents’ emotion malleability beliefs predicated their social anxiety symptoms both directly and indirectly through their own cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression. Parents’ emotion malleability beliefs were indirectly associated with reduced adolescent social anxiety symptoms via adolescents’ increased cognitive reappraisal. These findings, based on the context of family interaction, suggest that cognitive reappraisal, more than expressive suppression, may reflect a dyadic family process through which emotion malleability beliefs are associated with adolescent social anxiety symptoms.