Emotional Regulation, Prosocial Behavior and Psychological Distress among University Students

Abstract

The purpose of the present research is to investigate the relationship and effects of emotional regulation prosocial behavior on psychological distress among university students. For the purpose of collecting data scales used were ERQ (The Emotion Regulation Questionnaire) (Gross & John, 2003), PTM (Prosocial tendencies measure) (Carlo & Randall, (2002) and DASS 21(Lovibond,S.H. & Lovibond,S.H.,(1995) and through convenient sampling (N=319; male=150 and female=169) from university students. It was hypotheses that there will be significant relationship between emotional regulation (reappraisal, suppression), prosocial behaviour (anonymous, dire, public, emotional, altruism, and compliant) and psychological distress (stress, anxiety, depression) among university students and it was also hypothesized that there will be significant relationship among study variable subscales with respect to gender, age and level of education among university students. The findings showed that reappraisal (dimension of emotional regulation) is positively correlated with prosocial tendencies subscale (anonymous, dire, emotional and compliant) and negatively correlated with depression (dimension of DASS21). It also shows that emotional regulation subscale (suppression) is positively correlated with public and negatively correlated with altruism (prosocial tendencies subscales).It also shows that prosocial tendencies subscale (public) is significantly positively correlated with stress, anxiety and depression (dimension of DASS21) and altruism is negatively correlated with stress, anxiety and depression. The results show that there is a significant difference in gender with respect to anxiety and depression, males shows higher level of stress and depression as compared to females. And it also shows that educational level does have significant effect as result indicate that bachelor’s students have significantly higher level of anxiety however there is no significant difference of age on these variables.