Participants
Maxime Levasseur
Emotional suppression (‘being strong’) is one of many behavioural methods that humans use to regulate emotions. Previous research has found that this suppression has a negative relationship with certain wellbeing measures. This project explored the relationship between emotional suppression and wellbeing, and whether this was linked to participants having a chronic health condition and/or British nationality. We found that emotional suppression had a moderate negative relationship with wellbeing; and British participants had significantly higher emotional suppression than non-British participants. However, nationality and having a chronic health condition did not impact the relationship between suppression and wellbeing. The findings of this project potentially have important practical applications, including changing wider societal norms that people (particularly British people, according to our sample) need to suppress their emotions. Working on reducing these suppression norms could also have positive implications for the mental health sector, due to the negative correlation between suppression and wellbeing.
Funded by: Newcastle University Research Scholarship
Project Supervisor: Dr Sophia Daoudi-Simison