Malaga, (EFE).- Minors and adolescents who do not express their emotions show higher levels of aggressiveness, in the same way that the ability to reassess a situation to change its emotional effect is correlated with protective factors against anger, anxiety or depression.
This is confirmed by a study carried out by the Emotions Laboratory of the University of Malaga (UMA). It is directed by Professor Pablo Fernández-Berrocal, who has published the journal ‘ScienceDirect’.
Researchers have analyzed how emotion regulation strategies influence adolescent aggression. A very current problem in Spain, where in recent weeks there have been several serious group attacks carried out by minors.
This is the case of what happened last week in Malaga. Six young people, three of them minors, were arrested for beating a child. They caused him to break his nose and several teeth, and burn him with flares.
Emotional regulation strategies
To carry out this study, the UMA psychologists have evaluated 654 primary and secondary school students between the ages of 9 and 18, who have had to answer a questionnaire aimed at understanding the processes that underlie the aggressive behaviors of this population.
Specifically, the Emotions Laboratory has focused its study on the analysis of two emotional regulation strategies: cognitive reappraisal and emotional suppression, considered key to understanding the violent behavior of the youngest.
Emotional suppression is the mechanism by which people avoid openly expressing their emotions in problematic situations. “Repressing feelings is something that we all do at some point, but if you manage everything in life like this, what happens is that you get more angry and that ends up exploding into sadness or aggressiveness,” Pablo Fernández-Berrocal explained to EFE.
The psychologist assures that when emotions are suppressed, they physiologically accumulate and this ends up being internalized, which can cause anxiety or depression, or it can be externalized through aggressive behavior.
“You have to learn not to suppress emotions”, emphasizes the UMA professor, in the same way that it is essential to know how to apply cognitive reappraisal, that is, to have the ability to reinterpret a situation to change its emotional meaning.
Reassessing a situation involves looking at the problem from different perspectives, assuming the situation and trying to find an explanation, looking for the positive side of things.
“But that is not easy because we always look at the critical things of others, not their positive things. It is something cultural”, says Fernández-Berrocal.
Results that confirm the hypothesis
The results of the study confirm what psychology has been proposing for a long time. Young adolescents who present a higher level of suppression of emotions, that is, who repress their feelings more, show greater aggressiveness and greater negative affect. What is the tendency to feel negative moods, such as anguish, guilt, hostility or irritability.
In contrast, greater use of cognitive reappraisal is associated with lower levels of aggression, both physical and anger, and decreased negative affect. But the most important thing, Fernández-Berrocal points out, is that this strategy also increases positive affect. Also positive emotions, such as joy, optimism, humor, enthusiasm or determination.
These conclusions highlight the importance of implementing emotional intelligence programs in schools and institutes to help young people regulate their emotions. Decreasing the levels of negative affect and, in turn, aggressive behaviors.
Schools in Spain and Latin America
The Emotions Laboratory of the University of Malaga has developed an educational program called INTEMO+. It includes activities that teach young people to openly express their emotions instead of inhibiting or hiding them. Also to reinterpret situations to change their emotional meaning.
They have applied it in some schools in Spain and Latin America and the result has been very satisfactory. This is how Pablo Fernández-Berrocal explains it, who calls for emotional education to be a subject from infant and primary school in Spanish schools. This also implies providing these centers with enough psychologists.
“Emotional education should be worked on from a very young age, it is better to work on prevention,” says the expert. He emphasizes that “mental health is as important as physical health”, despite the fact that this continues to be a pending challenge in the country. EFE