Emotional Granularity, Coping, and Adjustment in First-Generation College Students

First-generation college students (FGCS) who are the first in their family to go to college face unique challenges in their transition and adjustment to college and graduate at significantly lower rates than their non-FGCS peers. Research has shown that emotional health is integral to maintaining overall well-being, which includes both physical and mental health, and in-turn is a useful predictor of individual students’ adjustment to university environments (Smidt & Suvak, 2015). It has also been theorized that the ability to, whether verbally or conceptually, characterize emotional experiences with nuance and granularity is correlated with the ability to better overcome adversities. To assess whether emotional granularity may help FGCS retention, we collected the self-narratives of 10 FGCS juniors and seniors about their transition to and through college through in-person interviews. We used a grounded theory approach to code the narratives for emotional granularity (EG), an individual’s ability to differentiate between specific states of emotion and coping strategies for negative events. Analysis revealed a correlation between EG and the number of coping strategies utilized, suggesting that institutional efforts that improve the EG of FGCS may help their retention. EMOTIONAL GRANULARITY AND COPING 3 Emotional Granularity, Coping, and Adjustment in First-Generation College Students Increasing numbers of first-generation college students (FGCS), students whose parents did not attend a four-year institution, are attending college in hopes of creating a better life for themselves and their families. Higher education enables socioeconomic mobility by enriching students’ social networks and providing opportunities for higher paying careers (Knight & Yorke, 2003). Unfortunately, relative to their non-FGCS peers, FGCS have significantly less social and economic capital (i.e., resources gathered through social networks, college knowledge, and financial assistance from families) to draw on while adjusting to and navigating through college (Moschetti & Hudley, 2015). For instance, many parents of FGCS who did not attend college are unable to offer specific pieces of advice to ease their children’s transition to college. In contrast, drawing on personal experience, parents of non-FGCS can stress the importance of applying for financial aid, asking for help in class or during office hours, utilizing on-campus resources, or proactively searching for financial assistance. FGCS are also often socioeconomically disadvantaged, as their parents do not have a college degree that would make them competitive for higher paying jobs, compared to their non-FGCS peers. As a result, FGCS may spend less hours building new social networks or studying and instead spend their time working to support themselves or even their families. Taken together, the lack of social and economic capital available to FGCS can exacerbate the difficulty of their adjustment to and success in college. The combination of these unique financial, academic, and social challenges can be overwhelming to FGCS and places them at risk of dropping out in their first two years and never reaching graduation (Ishitani 2006; Tanjula, 2014). FGCS who do not drop out in the first two years still face challenges, as 72.6% of FGCS who remain in college after two years are unable EMOTIONAL GRANULARITY AND COPING 4 to graduate from college in four years, while only 57.9% of non-FGCS graduate at . This difference remains even when comparing graduation rates of FGCS and non-FGCS in five and six years after matriculation (Hurtado, Franke, DeAngelo, Pryor, & Tran, 2011). A growing body of research focuses on improving FGCS retention. Institutional efforts to improve the retention and graduation rates of FGCS have focused on developing programs focused on promoting a sense of belonging and providing academic support to students. More specifically, encouraging FGCS to participate in the mentoring programs offered by the federally funded Equal Opportunities Program and, at the university where these data was collected, creating The First Generation Initiative, which are both designed to offer academic and social support to FGCS as well as increase their visibility on campus. Unfortunately, research shows continually and significantly lower rates of sense of belonging, higher rates of depression and stress, and lower use of mental health services for FGCS relative to non-FGCS (Stebleton, 2014). While the institutional efforts and programs are far from ineffective, FGCS continue to face at times overwhelming obstacles on their journey through college. Previous research suggests that well-being, a consistent state of positive emotions, peace, and health, is tied to intrinsically motivated learning and facilitates optimal states of learning (Wentzel & Wigfield, 2009). Thus, understanding the factors that contribute to the well-being of FGCS and applying this knowledge to institutional strategies to improve FGCS retention has immense potential. Empirical research has shown that emotions, mental states of varying intensity of pleasure or displeasure associated with thoughts, feelings, and behavioral responses; are closely linked to well-being (Smidt & Suvak, 2015). The skillful regulation and expression of one’s emotions is necessary to have positive and productive social interactions, as it facilitates effective communication, consideration for others, and appropriate reactions to dangerous or EMOTIONAL GRANULARITY AND COPING 5 detrimental situations (Nesse, 2000). A meta-analysis of over five-hundred peer-reviewed articles on happiness and success established that happiness has a causal relationship to both successful outcomes in interpersonal and professional realms. The analysis revealed that happy people seemed more likely to be objectively successful because their happiness facilitated prosocial behavior, positive self-perceptions, and problem-focused coping, i.e., coping strategies that remove or lessen challenges through active engagement in activities and relationships (Lyubomirsky, King, & Diener, 2005). Happiness and other positive emotions have also been theorized to contribute to successful life outcomes in the Broaden-and-Build Theory, which states that a positive emotion such as contentment can lead to a broadening perspective of the world and self, which facilitates the ability to empathize with others and thereby build social relationships and skills (Fredrickson, 2001). Skillful regulation and expression of negative emotions also plays a critical role in mental health and well-being. Healthy awareness and expression of negative emotions can motivate people to withdraw, conserve resources, and otherwise avoid harm (Kavanagh, May, & Andrade, 2009), and the ability to acknowledge, rather than suppress, negative emotions has been correlated with increased ability to adopt adaptive strategies, strategies that address the negative situation in a positive and healthy way (i.e. exercise, meditation, building social networks), over maladaptive coping strategies, strategies that are temporary fixes and even harm physical or mental health in the long run (i.e. binge drinking, self-harm) (May, Andrade, Batey, Berry, & Kavanagh, 2010). In other words, people who suppress or attempt to avoid expressing negative emotions are more likely to use maladaptive coping strategies, such as regularly relying on alcohol in response to life events that prompt negative emotions. Suppressed negative emotions may also erupt as hostility and aggression, harming the suppressor and others (Garofalo, Holden, EMOTIONAL GRANULARITY AND COPING 6 Zeigler-Hill, & Velotti, 2016). Research suggests that individuals’ ability to regulate, express, and acknowledge both positive and negative emotions is critical for developing well-being and increasing the likelihood of successful outcomes in higher education. These studies suggest that improving the well-being and happiness of FGCS may facilitate their transition to college. The validity of EG as a predictor of academic success can be examined, though not conclusively, with retroactive examination of gender differences in FGCS graduation. Previous research has shown that women tend to pay greater voluntary and involuntary attention to emotion than men, and display greater negative emotion differentiation, a concept analogous to emotional granularity (Mankus, Boden, &Thompson, 2016). This may be in part due to socialization, as girls are more likely than boys to be socialized to express and discuss emotions (Chaplin, 2015; Fivush & Buckner, 2000). Gender differences in EG may therefore contribute to the observed gender differences in FGCS’s retention, reported by the Office of Undergraduate Retention and the FGCS committee at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2014, which showed that male FGCS had lower graduation rates than female FGCS. Numerous, and sometimes inconsistent, conceptual models of emotions that have been proposed over the years since the inception of emotion research (Ekman, 2016). Following Darwin (1959), emotions were initially conceptualized by Ekman as universal experiences shared by all humans across cultures; his theory of universal emotions, which includes seven such emotions, has been widely researched and supported cross-culturally (Ekman & Friesen, 1971; Sauter, Eisner, Ekman, & Scott, 2010). Other prominent models of emotions include the James-Lange and the Canon-Bard theories, which are physiological theories of emotion, and the Schacter-Singer Theory, a cognitive theory of emotion that draws on the former theories (Lang, 1994). EMOTIONAL GRANULARITY AND COPING 7 Psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett challenged Darwin and Ekman’s theory of universal emotions by proposing the theory of constructed emotions, in which emotions are conceptualized as unique experiences formed by an individual’s culture as much as the physiological