Abstract
Objectives: Emotion goals lie at the heart of emotion regulation, as people have to first decide what emotions they want to feel before engaging in emotion regulation. Given that children with Asperger’s Syndrome (AS) are characterized by exhibiting difficulties in emotion regulation, studying whether they display similar or different emotion goals compared to typically developing children (TD) may provide insightful information. Methods: Thirty AS and 30 TD children (10-12 years) reported about their general (i.e., how they want to feel in general) and contextualized (i.e., how they want to feel when confronting vs. collaborating with someone) emotion goals, and about their difficulties in emotion regulation through questionnaires. Results: Results showed that both groups did not differ in their general emotional goals and in their contextualized emotion goals for happiness for collaboration and anger for confrontation. AS children only differed from TD children in a higher preference for sadness for collaboration and happiness for confrontation. These emotion goals predicted their difficulties to engage in goal-directed behaviour. Conclusions: The obtained results support the need to further study emotion goals as an aspect of emotion dysregulation, namely the difficulties to engage in goal-directed behaviour when experiencing different emotions.
Publication Date
2018-09-01
Publication Title
British Journal of Clinical Psychology
Volume
57
Issue
3
Publisher
Wiley
ISSN
2044-8260
Embargo Period
2024-11-22
Recommended Citation
Lopez-Perez, B., Ambrona, T., & Gummerum, M. (2018) 'Emotional Preferences and Goals and Emotion Dysregulation in Children with Asperger’s Syndrome and Typically Developing Children', British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 57(3). Wiley: Retrieved from https://pearl.plymouth.ac.uk/psy-research/845
