Divergence of children’s friendships and intrinsic interpersonal emotion regulation: Factoring in extrinsic interpersonal emotion regulation strategy use.

As peers become a major part of children's social life, children seek out and provide support for each other when experiencing strong emotions. We examined children's intrinsic interpersonal emotion regulation (IER; children's emotion regulation support seeking from peers) and extrinsic IER (regulation strategies peers provide to help regulate emotion). We examined the extent to which (a) the peers whom children turn to for intrinsic IER diverge from those they consider close friends and (b) extrinsic IER strategy provided by peers is associated with intrinsic IER seeking. Study participants were 131 (67 girls) fourth and fifth grade children from six classrooms from urban settings in a U.S. Midwest state. Based on a peer nomination procedure, children nominated classmates who are their close friends, peers they turn to when sad or angry (i.e., intrinsic IER), and peers who help them regulate sadness or anger through listening and talking (i.e., extrinsic IER). We used social network analysis methods, with classrooms as a unit of analysis, to examine the pattern of ties in the nomination data. We demonstrated that (a) children's intrinsic IER ties are related to, yet distinct from, close friendship; (b) peers whom children turn to for intrinsic IER differ, to some extent, for sadness versus anger; and (c) extrinsic IER strategy use is significantly associated with intrinsic IER after taking friendship ties into account. The findings suggest that emotion regulatory needs channel children's social interactions, and extrinsic IER strategy accounts for some of the divergence of intrinsic IER ties from friendship. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).