Emotional Support and Mental Health: Investigating Interpersonal Emotion Regulation in Chinese and Dutch Contexts
Authors:   , Zeng Zihao 
Published: September 2024

In times of hardship and stress, people often rely on others for emotional support. Over the last four decades, emotional support has been a major focus of research within the psychology of coping and mental health. However, several aspects of the psychology of emotional support remain unexplored. This dissertation investigates the interplay between emotional support, interpersonal emotion regulation, and mental health across cultural contexts, focusing on populations in China and the Netherlands. The dissertation highlights the critical role of family support during crises like the COVID-19 pandemic and addresses mental health challenges faced by Chinese youth. It also explores the role of partner support in Western cultures, with emphasis on partners of cancer survivors. The dissertation employs diverse methods, including field studies, systematic reviews, experimental research, and theoretical analysis, to advance understanding of emotional support.
Chapter 1 introduces the dissertation, outlining its objectives, which focus on the impact of emotional support on mental health and the role of interpersonal emotion regulation. It discusses key concepts and identifies four gaps in existing research: 1) cross-cultural applicability of emotional support; 2) clinical relevance in therapeutic settings; 3) the perspective of the support provider; and 4) the need for theoretical integration across diverse perspectives.
Chapters 2-4 examine family as a source of social-emotional support among Chinese adolescents and young adults. Chapter 2 reports an empirical study on the influence of family functioning on the mental health of 1,555 Chinese university students during the COVID-19 outbreak. Improved family functioning increased the likelihood of students being in the low-symptom group by 16% to 24%, supporting the notion that family support acts as a psychological buffer during public health crises.
Chapter 3 examines the roles of parent-child relationships and parental educational involvement in shaping the mental health of 771 Chinese adolescents. Strong parent-child relationships and educational involvement led to less perceived stress and lower rates of non-suicidal self-injury. Meaning in life moderated the negative effects of perceived stress on non-suicidal self-injury, reducing its impact as adolescents' perceived meaning in life grew.
Chapter 4 studies the relationship between family functioning and suicidal ideation among 4,515 Chinese adolescents. Defeat mediated the relationship between family functioning and suicidal ideation, while meaning in life moderated the impact of family functioning on defeat, highlighting family functioning's role in protecting against adolescent suicidality.
Chapters 5-7 focus on interpersonal emotion regulation in close relationships among Western samples. Chapter 5 presents a systematic review of the connections between interpersonal emotion regulation and mental health in cancer survivors. From 6,928 studies, 86 papers involving 67,592 cancer survivors were analyzed. The review found small-to-moderate correlations between interpersonal emotion regulation and mental health outcomes, highlighting the pervasive impact of these processes and the need for more explicit theory testing.
Chapter 6 outlines an experimental study on interpersonal emotion regulation across three timescales: phasic, tonic, and chronic. The study involves 150 romantic couples engaging in emotional sharing tasks and aims to enrich understanding of how interpersonal emotion regulation operates over different timescales.
Chapter 7 presents a 2x2 model of interpersonal emotion regulation for the psychological care of cancer survivors, emphasizing caregivers’ roles. The model categorizes caregiver strategies into four types, depending on whether the focus is survivor-centric or caregiver-centric and whether the regulation is hedonic or counter-hedonic.
Chapter 8 offers a narrative integration of the dissertation’s main conclusions. It reviews the findings from each chapter and discusses how the dissertation fills the identified gaps. Limitations, such as the predominance of cross-sectional studies and lack of representative samples, are acknowledged. Despite these limitations, the dissertation underscores the critical role of emotional support and interpersonal emotion regulation in mental health.