Degree

BS (Social Sciences & Liberal Arts)

Faculty / School

School of Economics and Social Sciences (SESS)

Department

Department of Social Sciences & Liberal Arts

Date of Award

Spring 2024

Date of Submission

2024-08-13

Advisor

Dr. Ayesha Zia, Assistant Professor, Department of Social Sciences

Committee

Dr. Saima Bint-e-Saif, Assistant Professor, Institute of Business Administration

Project Type

SSLA Culminating Experience

Access Type

Restricted Access

Keywords

Emerging adults, Family Communication Patterns Theory, Cognitive Emotion Regulation, Well-Being, Collectivist culture

Abstract

Emerging adulthood is considered a transitional period in an individual’s life that is marked by distinct sets of challenges and transformations at the personal, relational and environmental level. Hence, an important task during this dynamic stage of life becomes to effectively deal and cope with life stressors that present themselves when one becomes an emerging adult. Since communication within families serves as the primary method through which socialization occurs, it has proved to play a significant role in the development of various emotion regulation skills. A prominent theory that is used to understand the role of communication within families is the Family Communication Patterns Theory (Koerner & Fitzpatrick, 2002a). Hence, this study explores the role of family communication as an integral aspect of the family that shapes an individual’s choice of emotion regulation strategies as well as their overall well-being. Additionally, the current study specifically explored the role of family communication in the use of cognitive emotion regulation strategies, as previous studies in this field have only assessed the impact on cognitive reappraisal while other cognitive emotion regulation strategies remain overlooked. Therefore, standard multiple regression was used to explore the impact of family communication patterns on four different kinds of cognitive emotion regulation strategies, namely, positive reappraisal, positive refocusing, rumination and catastrophizing. Pearson Correlation was tested to assess the relationship between family communication patterns and well-being in the cultural context of Pakistan. The study was conducted on 281 Pakistani emerging adults aged between 18-29, including 169 females and 112 males. Three of the multiple regression models produced significant results. Additionally, significant relationships were also observed in variables related through Pearson Correlation Coefficient. As hypothesized, conversation orientation positively and significantly predicted the use of positive refocusing while conformity orientation significantly and positively predicted the use of rumination and catastrophizing in this sample. Moreover, conversation orientation was positively and significantly related to well-being while conformity orientation showed a significant, negative relation with well-being. All key findings were interpreted in the broader context of culture and the stage of emerging adulthood. The study’s implications and recommendations for future research were also discussed at the end.

Pages

81

Previous Versions

Aug 28 2024
Aug 24 2024

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