Interpersonal Regulation Questionnaire (IRQ): Psychometric properties and gender differences in Chinese young adolescents.

Abstract

The Interpersonal Regulation Questionnaire (IRQ) is a scale developed to measure the tendency and efficacy of intrinsic interpersonal emotion regulation across positive and negative affective states. As the psychometric properties of the IRQ across cultures and different ages have not been well established, the current study was conducted to examine the applicability of the translated IRQ in a sample of Chinese young adolescents (initial n = 487; 50.20% are males; M = 14.52 years old, SD = .75). The original four-factor structure of the IRQ (i.e., negative-tendency, negative-efficacy, positive-tendency, and positive-efficacy) and other parsimonious models were examined and compared using confirmatory factor analysis. The results demonstrated that only the correlated-four-factor model had acceptable model fit indices. The internal consistencies of the four subscales were all above .70. Strict measurement invariance (i.e., configural, metric, and scalar) was achieved between males and females. In addition, latent mean comparison showed that females reported higher negative-efficacy and positive-tendency than males, while no gender variations were found for the remaining two factors. The validity of the IRQ was further supported by its convergent-discriminant associations with emotional well-being and distress, emotional expressivity, social competence, empathic responding, cognitive reappraisal, and delinquent behavior. Taken together, the IRQ is a reliable and valid measure for Chinese young adolescents' intrinsic interpersonal emotion regulation. Public Significance StatementThe present study suggests that after being translated to Mandarin, the Interpersonal Regulation Questionnaire (IRQ), which was originally developed by Williams et al. (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2018, 115, p. 224) to assess the tendency and efficacy of interpersonal emotion regulation in Western adults, applies to Chinese adolescents. It documents that the psychological attribute measured by IRQ may be an important concept universal for broader population groups and cultural contexts.

Empathy, sympathy, and emotion regulation: A meta-analytic review.

“…Apart from this basic distinction, empathy has also been differentiated into affective and cognitive aspects, with affective empathy referring to emotion sharing and cognitive empathy referring to the mentalizing skills required to understand the other's emotion (Eisenberg et al, 2015). Although correlated with affective empathy, cognitive empathy activates different neurological circuits (Bensalah et al, 2016;Decety & Michalska, 2010) and encompasses a more diverse range of standalone constructs that do not inherently reflect affective processes (e.g., theory of mind). Given our focus on links to ER-an affective process-we focused on affective empathy and sympathy in the present metaanalysis.…”

“…Even moderately high emotional arousal could disrupt this process and higher levels could result in personal distress rather than sympathy (Eisenberg et al, 2015). Nonetheless, many studies in this area conflate empathy and sympathy and/or refer to them interchangeably, and the differential association of ER with empathy versus sympathy has rarely been reported in the same study (for exceptions, see Ding et al, 2021; Liew et al, 2011; Schuetze et al, 2014). A meta-analytic examination of ER and empathy versus ER and sympathy would shed light on the conceptual and empirical utility of differentiating between empathy and sympathy and the theoretical and practical roles of ER skills in these respective other-oriented processes.…”

Preprint: Interpersonal emotion regulation in young adults with low and high psychosis proneness: A diary study

“…The remaining three strategies are aimed at downregulating negative emotions and entail asking others about their opinion (perspective-taking), imitating their way of dealing with emotional events (social modeling), or seeking their compassion (soothing). This set of strategies has been validated across various languages and cultures (Ding et al, 2021;Koç et al, 2019;Pruessner et al, 2020).…”

Psychometric Properties of Interpersonal Regulation Questionnaire for Chinese College Students: Gender Differences and Implications for Well-Being

“…A recent study examined the original four-factor structure, two-factor structures, and the possible hierarchical factor models for the IRQ using a Chinese adolescent sample [ 20 ]. The findings suggest that the four-factor model best represented the adolescent data.…”

“…However, under certain circumstances (people using less maladaptive emotional regulation strategies), some IER strategies (soothing) could also reduce depression [ 33 ], and in other cases (when people use low-level inner resources in regulating their emotions), IER strategies (perspective-taking) may increase the level of depression. In studies using Chinese youth samples, the use of IER has been associated positively with positive emotions and negatively with negative emotions or distress [ 20 , 28 , 34 ]. In summary, these results suggest that the effects of IER on social and emotional well-being are mixed, and the reasons for this are worthy of further exploration.…”