Skylar Hicks, a third-year student in the Counseling Psychology doctoral program at the University of Southern Mississippi, successfully defended her master’s thesis this week. Skylar’s thesis, The role of emotion regulation in the relationship between trait anger and relational aggression, explored the role of general negative affect, trait anger, and difficulties in emotion regulation in peer relational aggression among college students.

She found that trait anger and difficulties in emotion regulation were positively related to peer relational aggression. That is, students with a higher propensity to experience angry feelings and difficulties regulating their emotions were more likely to report engaging in relationally aggressive behavior in their peer relationships. Contrary to what was expected, difficulties in emotion regulation did not moderate the relationship between trait anger and relational aggression. We will likely conduct additional analyses to determine why this might be the case and how best to incorporate emotion regulation in future studies.

Tags: emotion regulation, relational aggression, trait anger