Unveiling the Network and Community Structures of Emotion Dysregulation: Sex Differences and Implications for Anxiety

Abstract

As aberrant emotion regulation is evident in anxiety disorders, elucidating the relationships between emotion dysregulation processes and anxiety symptoms is of great clinical and theoretical relevance. The goal of the current study is to investigate sex differences in the relationships between emotion dysregulation processes and between emotion dysregulation and anxiety symptoms, using graph-based analyses. Using data from a large and diverse sample (N = 1373, M_age = 19.6 years, female: 67.4%, Hispanic/Latinx: 58.7%) collected in 2021-2022 at a regional university, the findings indicated that: 1) “limited access to emotion regulation strategies” was most strongly associated with the other aspects of emotion dysregulation; 2) emotion dysregulation processes were clustered into antecedent- and response-focused dimensions; 3) there existed minimal biological sex differences in the relationships between different emotion dysregulation processes and how they clustered; and 4) “worrying too much about different things and “becoming easily annoyed or irritable” were the most salient anxiety symptoms associated with emotion dysregulation. The potential directional effects between emotion dysregulation processes and anxiety symptoms were explored. The findings suggested that “limited access to emotion regulation strategies” was the most influential aspect of emotion dysregulation, especially in the context of anxiety, which should be the target for intervention.