Strategies for Regulating Achievement Emotions: Conceptualization and Relations with Students’ Emotions, Well-Being, and Health

Background: Students’ achievement emotions profoundly influence their learning, academic performance, well-being, and educational trajectories. Understanding how students regulate these emotions is crucial for their academic flourishing. Aims: We examined students’ strategies for regulating three common achievement emotions (enjoyment, anxiety, boredom), and how these strategies relate to emotions, academic well-being, health problems, and achievement-related outcomes. Theoretical Framework: Our theoretical model of emotion regulation strategies is derived from the control-value theory of achievement emotions (Pekrun, 2006) and Harley et al.’s (2019) model of emotion regulation in achievement settings. It considers six groups of strategies: situation selection, social support, reappraisal, expression, suppression, and competence development. Samples: Participants included 350 (Study 1; Germany), 359 (Study 2; England), and 200 (Study 3; Germany) university students. Methods: Studies 1 and 2 were cross-sectional. Study 3 employed a five-wave prospective design and focused on course-specific achievement emotion regulation over one semester. We used a newly developed context- and emotion-specific measure of the six strategies targeting enjoyment, anxiety, and boredom (Regulation of Achievement Emotions Questionnaire, RAEQ). Results: Strategies were linked to students’ emotions, well-being, health, and academic achievement (perceived success, Studies 1 and 2; end-of-semester test scores, Study 3) across all three studies. Furthermore, achievement emotion regulation strategies were related to, but distinct from, general emotion regulation strategies. Conclusions: Findings highlight the importance of students’ regulation of both positive and negative emotions, suggest that emotion regulation is context-specific, and imply that reappraisal and competence development are especially adaptive. We discuss implications for educational practice and future research.