Citation

Ford BQ, Mauss IB, Troy AS, Smolen A, Hankin B. Emotion 2014; 14(5): 930-939.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2014, American Psychological Association)

DOI

10.1037/a0036835

PMID

24866526

Abstract

Carrying a short allele in the serotonin transporter polymorphism (5-HTTLPR) while experiencing stressful environments is linked to elevated risk for depression. What might offset this risky combination of genes and environment? We hypothesized that individual-level factors may play a protective role. Specifically, we examined whether individuals' ability to decrease their stress responses via effective emotion regulation may be an important moderating factor and addressed this hypothesis in a socioeconomically diverse sample of 205 children aged 9-15 years. At-risk children (short-allele carriers in high-stress contexts) exhibited more depressive symptoms than other groups. Importantly, at-risk children who used effective emotion regulation did not exhibit increased depressive symptoms. These results have important implications for the basic science of understanding risk and resilience: in addition to genes and environment, individuals' agentic ability to self-regulate may need to be considered as a critical third factor. Given that emotion regulation is learnable, these results also have strong public-health implications. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).

Language: en