Emotion Regulation Strategies and Academic Resilience in First-Generation University Students

Résumé

First-generation university students often navigate academic transitions without the informal guidance available to peers with college-educated parents, potentially increasing reliance on individual emotion regulation strategies to manage academic stress and setbacks. This study examines the relationship between specific emotion regulation strategies and academic resilience among first-generation undergraduate students across their first two years of study. Using a longitudinal survey design combined with academic performance records, we assess how strategies including cognitive reappraisal, expressive suppression, and active problem-focused coping relate to persistence through academically challenging periods such as failed assessments or probationary status. Findings indicate that cognitive reappraisal was consistently associated with stronger academic resilience, while expressive suppression showed a weak negative association that became more pronounced among students reporting limited peer support networks. Problem-focused coping strategies were most protective when paired with awareness of available institutional support resources, suggesting that regulation strategy effectiveness depends partly on students' knowledge of support infrastructure rather than strategy choice alone. These findings support targeted resilience-building interventions for first-generation students that combine emotion regulation skill development with explicit orientation to institutional support systems, rather than treating these as separate intervention domains.