Influence of Emotion Regulation on Pre-service Teachers’ Mental Well-being and Interpersonal Relationships

This study aims to determine the two emotion regulation strategies—cognitive reappraisal or expressive suppression—used by pre-service teachers enrolled in Philippine Normal University, and examine its relationship with their mental well-being and interpersonal relationships. This study utilized quantitative correlational research design by administering an online survey that contains three questionnaires: Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) to determine what emotion regulation strategy is frequently used, Warwick-Edinburg Mental Well-Being Scale (WEMWBS) to determine the state of their well-being, and the Functional Idiographic Assessment Template-Questionnaire-Short Form (FIAT-Q—SF) to determine their levels of interpersonal relationship and functioning problems. The results of this study shows that frequent use of expressive suppression leads to lower levels of mental well-being and higher levels of interpersonal relationships and functioning problems, while more frequent use of cognitive reappraisal results in higher levels of mental well-being, but shows no significance or causation to interpersonal relationship and functioning problems. It can be concluded that the majority of pre-service teachers use cognitive reappraisal as their emotion regulation strategy more frequently as it was found to be significantly associated with their mental well-being levels, but was insignificant in producing interpersonal relationship difficulties. Furthermore, expressive suppression displayed more respondents with severe levels of interpersonal relationship difficulties than those who more frequently use cognitive reappraisal. The results are further discussed in light of its implications to the pre-service teachers’ well-being and mental health.