Introduction

Approximately one and five children attending U.S. public schools are Latino with 11 % reporting first generation status compared to 55 % of Latino adults (Fry and Passel 2009). In the last decade, the Latino population has accounted for 56 % of the total growth in the U.S. population with many Latinos migrating or being placed (e.g., refugees) in non-traditional resettlement communities throughout the Southeastern United States (Passel et al. 2011). The growth of the Latino population in this region of the country has placed significant strain on the infrastructure of existing systems (e.g., schools) as communities attempt to address the needs of Latino youth and their families (Kochhar et al. 2005). Between 2000 and 2010, the states of South Carolina (192 %), Alabama (170 %), Tennessee (178 %), Kentucky (165 %), North Carolina (156 %), Arkansas (134 %), Georgia (131 %) and Mississippi (120 %) had the highest rates of growth in Latino children across the United States (Passel et al. 2011). A portion of Latinos enter into these communities as refugees contributing to these increases but resulting in different resettlement needs (e.g., potentially higher relates of pre-migration trauma) and acculturation experiences.

First generation youth are often exposed to a greater amount of contact with community institutions (e.g., emersion in the U.S. school system) in their resettlement communities compared to their parents that may accelerate youth’s acculturation needs. The adjustment of acculturating students is dependent on the fit between the student and the school environment (Chang and Sue 2003) with differences in acculturation acting as risk and protective factors for youth’s social emotional learning (Kerr et al. 2003). Although acculturation has been associated with academic achievement, acculturation may be particularly stressful as youth are often positioned amidst two cultures across a variety of sociocultural domains (e.g., school, ethnic peer groups, religious community) that directly and indirectly affect their development (Oppedal 2006). High levels of intercultural interaction introduced by the educational system may make acculturation experiences for youth particularly difficult and may require more immediate cross-cultural adaptation in addition to other developmental needs.

Many factors related to resilience are established through various stages of development (Kuperminc et al. 2009) including emotion regulation. Students’ emotions are important in the context of the school environment as negative emotions and regulation difficulties may impede academic success (Durlak et al. 2011) and is associated psychopathology and emotional disorders among youth (Trosper et al. 2009). Various factors (e.g., social, temperamental, neurobiological) during adolescence are crucial in shaping emotion regulation (Thompson and Meyer 2007). Psychological (e.g., ability to manage environmental challenges and positive relationships) and social protective (e.g., social integration) factors available prior to or emerging during acculturation may affect an individual’s ability to regulate their emotions while acculturation itself may create situational circumstances likely to affect emotion regulation. Because of the relationship between acculturation, psychological distress, and externalizing behaviors (Gonzales et al. 2010), identifying factors that affect emotional regulation and improve the social and emotional wellbeing of acculturating youth is important. The purpose of the current study is to examine the relationships between acculturation and components of psychological and social well-being on emotion regulation among first generation Latino youth resettled in a non-traditional resettlement community. It is anticipated that higher levels of psychological and social well-being will positively relate to emotion regulation. Consistent with previous research revealing conditional circumstances under which acculturation relates to particular outcomes of interest, an interaction term between Hispanic/Latino enculturation and acculturation to White American culture was included and explored.

Differences in Latino Population

According to the U.S. Census (2010), people of Mexican descent represent the largest portion of the Latino population (62.9 %) followed by people of Puerto Rican (9.1 %), Central American (7.9 %), South American (5.4 %), Cuban(3.5 %), and Dominican (2.8 %) descent. There are many unifying factors across Latinos that help to galvanize a broader ethnic identity (Lopez 2013). Yet, meaningful linguistic and cultural differences exist among Latinos as well as differences in pre-migration and post-migration experiences. The historic relationship between each Latino group and the U.S. has differed significantly with U.S. policy providing a more direct path to citizenship for Cubans compared to other Latino Groups (Pew Center 2006). Between 2010 and 2012, approximately 9,686 Cubans entered the United States with refugee status representing approximately 5 % of the total number of refugees but 59 % of the total number of refugees permitted entered from Latin America and the Caribbean (Martin and Yankay 2013). Among Cubans entering the United States, 40 % under the age of 18 report speaking English less than well compared to 20 % (Pew Center 2006). Fifty-eight percent of Cubans report foreign nativity compared to 34 % of people of Mexican descent, 31 % of people of Puerto Rican descent (outside U.S. mainland), and 57 % people of Guatemalan descent (Brown and Patten 2013a, b, c, d). However, people of Cuban descent in the U.S. tend to be older, have a higher level of education, higher annual income, and are less likely to live in poverty compared to other Latino groups (Brown and Patten 2013a). Moreover, Cubans are more likely to identify themselves as White compared to other Latinos, are more likely to have U.S. citizenship, and identify the U.S. as their homeland (Pew Hispanic Center 2006) which has implications for their strategies and experiences with acculturation.

Acculturation

Acculturation reflects individuals’ or groups’ direct interaction with culturally distinct groups or social influences that result in varying levels of retained enculturation or cultural change (Smokowski and Bacallao 2006; Berry 2006a; Redfield et al. 1936).

Cultural changes constitute language acquisition and loss, changes in social relationship preference and formation, cultural traditions or practices, food and dress, values and beliefs, and social identity (Thomson and Hoffman-Goetz 2009). In some instance, changes related to superficial aspects of culture occur relatively quickly compared to deeper more entrenched aspects which may change over longer periods of intercultural interaction (Schwartz et al. 2010). Variations in cultural change and maintenance (e.g., integration, separation, assimilation) may reflect the extent to which acculturation is necessary for social inclusion and participation. The extent to which individuals are socially integrated into society and social institutions as well as intercultural relationships is often an indicator of broader cultural inclusion and acculturation (Berry 2006a). Acculturation in a new environment depends on a variety of contextual factors related to the dominant group’s attitudes concerning the perceived appropriateness of acculturation (e.g., assimilation versus separation) as well as a person’s own motivations which may or may not be related to acculturation.

Acculturation Among Youth

The acculturation development model considers the experiences of youth from a holistic and developmental perspective and recognizes that youth develop culturally specific understandings of sociocultural domains to which they are enculturated (Oppedal 2006). Therefore, first generation youth may experience varying levels of acculturation specific to the domains in life that require significant cross-cultural skill (e.g., within the school system) with subsequent developmental experiences situated between different aspects of cultural life (e.g., a person’s culture of origin and the host culture of a new country). This view of acculturation recognizes that the cultural changes and adjustments made by youth should be considered in relation to their ontogenetic development across their life-span connecting acculturation to other facets of development (Oppedal 2006).

Acculturation differs based on a variety of factors including cultural distance, gender, and age. Indicators of acculturation have produced mixed results regarding positive social and cultural outcomes (e.g., educational obtainment and achievement) as well as externalizing behavioral problems (e.g., conduct problem, early sexual activity, and substance abuse) among Latino youth (Gonzales et al. 2010). Significant emphasis has been placed the acculturation gap between Latino youth and their parents with significant differences in Hispanic enculturation resulting in higher risk for substance use for youth (Unger et al. 2009). Moreover, Santisteban et al. (2012) found that although familism may not mediate the relationship between acculturation and problems behavior, familism as well as Latino orientation did indirectly affect externalizing behaviors through its relationship with parenting practices. Variations in mental health outcomes associated with acculturation have emerged across research studies (Rudmin 2009) potentially implicating conditional circumstances under which acculturation (e.g., assimilation or biculturalism) may relate to reduced mental health functioning.

Emotion Regulation and Resilience

Individuals that experience positive outcomes despite being exposed to significantly adverse and challenging circumstances display resilience (Masten 2001, 2007). The ecological transactional perspective on resilience and stress describes how transactions between individual, micro, exo, and macrosystems impact children’s psychological development with proximal processes and systems exerting a stronger influence than more distal features (Bronfenbrenner 1979; Kuperminc et al. 2009). For example, factors within the individual (e.g., emotion regulation) interact with the immediate settings in which an individual lives (microsystem), which is more distally affected by community practices, policies, and norms (exosystem) as well as broader level social and cultural practices that constitute the macrosystem (Bronfenbrenner 1988). However, this model neglects the more proximal influences of culture and cultural transactions (e.g., acculturative stress) across various systems that more directly and immediately affect resilience and individual functioning (Kuperminc et al. 2009). The cultural–ecological–transactional perspective provides a framework for understanding resilience among culturally diverse groups by recognizing the intersection of culture across varying ecological system levels.

Ontogenetic development at the individual level, which is central to the ecological model, identifies factors within the individual that interact with their environment (Bronfenbrenner 1988). Emotion regulation is part of an individual’s ontogenetic development and reflects a neurobiological process (Bronfenbrenner 1979) that helps individuals manage the increasing intensity of emotion (Leahy et al. 2009). Emotion regulation reflects an individual’s ability to control or moderate their emotions through various automatic and conscious processes (Gross and Thompson 2009). Various aspects of emotion regulation and the strategies employed to manage those emotions are related to childhood psychopathology and emotional disorders (Trosper et al. 2009). The contexts in which stressors occur often dictate the effectiveness of specific emotion regulation strategies and may pose a risk to the individual or act as a protective factor that promotes resilience against psychological distress (Gross and Thompson 2009; Thompson and Meyer 2007).

The cultural-ecological transaction model identifies protective and contextual factors that occur at the individual (e.g., self-regulation), microsystem (e.g., positive relationships), exosystem (e.g., cultural protective factors), and macrosystem levels (e.g., social integration and social capital) which increase or mitigate stressful events (Kuperminc et al. 2009). Many contextual factors contribute to individual’s acculturative experiences and create conditional or interactive circumstances likely related to emotion regulation. Several protective factors present in microsystems reflect factors related to psychological and social well-being that might contribute to an individual’s emotion regulation.

Psychological & Social Well-Being

The promotion of social emotional learning helps to lower risk associated with negative social circumstance by improving the mental health and social wellbeing of youth (Khanlou and Wray 2014). Social well-being reflects an individual’s social integration, the extent of their social trust, as well as their abilities to grasp the meaningfulness of social occurrences around them contributing to their sense of direction about society (Keyes 1998). Various aspects of social wellbeing (e.g., social integration and social trust) have demonstrated a relationship with health and psychological distress revealing the importance of public as well as private aspects of life in individual functioning (Usher 2006). The needs to navigate various intercultural milieus (e.g., integration) and internally reconcile cultural changes during acculturation connect to private and public aspects of life associated with well-being. Moreover, integration into a specific community or group, whether intercultural or densely intracultural, becomes a critically important facet for cultural adaptation. Keyes (1998) connects work on cultural estrangement to social integration arguing that individuals are likely to experience social isolation if they are socially rejected or identify significant cleavage between their own values and those held highly by boarder society. From an acculturative and cultural ecological transactional perspective, these values may be ensconced in a cultural context that enhances or restricts social integration creating potential risk or protective factors for positive development including emotion regulation.

Psychological well-being emphasizes the thriving of individuals through the existential aspects of life that reflect positive functioning and feelings states (Keyes et al. 2002). Ryff (2013) argues that several domains (e.g., self-acceptance, positive relations with others, autonomy, environmental mastery, purpose in life, and personal growth) across discussions of well-being can be integrated to represent positive functioning. Positive relationships with others, environmental mastery, and purpose in life are aspects of psychological well-being that may be particularly germane to discussions of acculturation and emotion regulation. The development of positive relationships with others signifies that a person has warm and trusting relationships as well as the capacity for empathy and reciprocity (Ryff 2014). Environmental mastery reflects an individual’s ability to meet the demands of complex environments by effectively utilizing surrounding opportunities to meet his or her needs (ibid). An individual’s purpose in life reflects an individual’s goal directedness, objectives for living, and sense of satisfaction and meaning associated with his or her accomplishments (Ryff 2013).

Aspects of psychological well-being may relate to acculturation in a variety of ways. Positive relationships with others may act as a protective factor against acculturative stress through social support. In addition, environmental mastery may allow individuals to gain a better sense of acculturative expectations and needs in his or her immediate environment and make cultural transitions with greater ease and confidence. An individual’s purpose in life may add to these protective processes. Purpose in life likely provides a sense of direction and stability that fosters resilience despite significant cultural, environmental, and social changes associated with acculturation. Moreover, an individual’s sense of satisfaction with their previous accomplishments may be related to their executive functioning. Executive functioning is responsible for long-term planning and inhibiting responses related to emotion dysregulation (Zelazo and Cunningham 2007). Low levels of emotion regulation likely interfere with goal obtainment and sense of meaning, while such satisfaction may provide a sense of direction through times of adversity.

High levels of purpose, mastery, and growth despite significant adversity have prompted a focus on how these factors relate to resilience (Ryff et al. 1998). Moreover, environmental mastery and positive relationships with others are negatively related to dysfunctional affect and energy level, and positively related to self-esteem, affect balance, and life satisfaction (Ryff and Keyes 1995). Therefore, psychological well-being may protect against psychological distress while also demonstrating the extent to which an individual is thriving in areas not traditionally captured by some measures of well-being. Given that both social and psychological aspects of well-being can be found at various levels of ecological functioning and development, it is important to understand their relationship to emotion regulation in the context of acculturation.

Methods

Participants and Sampling

Participants were recruited from an English as a second language (ESL) school situated on the border between the Southern and Midwestern United States. This ESL school helps to transition refugee and immigrant youth with low English proficiency into the broader county school system, and provides an English proficiency centered curriculum for youth in the 6th through 11th grade. Procedures and materials for the study were approved by the University Institutional Review Board and the Public County Schools Internal Review Board. Participants were recruited to participate in the study if they self-identify as Hispanic or Latino and were between the ages of 11 and 18. During a scheduled class period, students were approached in their classroom and asked if they were interested in participating in this study. Consent, assent, and study information was provided in Spanish and English to parents and youth. Consent and assent forms were obtained from interested parents and youth. Approximately 150 students were approached and N = 56 1st generation Latino youth agreed to participate in the survey resulting in a response rate of 37 %. Although the response rate appears low, it is important to recognize that the majority of youth in the school have refugee status which includes the majority of Latino youth. Table 1 contains means and standard deviations for the study variables. Forty-nine percent of the sample was female. Thirty-six percent of youth indicated that their parent’s had less than a high diploma followed by 35 % reporting the completion or some post-secondary education, and 18.4 % reporting the completion of high school. The mean number of months in the United States (M = 9.1091, SD = 5.91) was close to the mean number of months of residency for their current location (M = 8.33, SD = 4.51). Seventy percent of youth reported nativity in Cuba, 15 % in Guatemala, 7.5 % in Mexico, 1.9 % in Puerto Rico, and 1.9 % in El Salvador (Fig. 1).

Table 1 Correlations between study variables N = 56
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Fig. 1
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Interaction between culture of origin enculturation and White American acculturation on emotion regulation

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Instruments

Translation of Instruments

All instruments were translated into Spanish and back translated into English to ensure that the initial translation was appropriate. The translation conducted was intended to be applicable across Spanish speaking populations so dialect specific translations were avoided. During survey administration, participants completed the survey independently; however, a fluent Spanish speaker read the directions and questions out loud to participants, and Spanish interpreters were available to answer participants’ questions. Some adjustments were made for poor performing items (e.g., removed from scale) that may not have translated appropriately or did not relate developmentally or culturally to the current sample. The correlations between related scales (e.g., psychological wellbeing and social wellbeing) demonstrated comparable relationships to those previously established providing some comparability following the scale’s translation.

Adolescent Resilience Scale

The Emotional Regulation Subscale from the Adolescent Resilience Scale (Oshio et al. 2003) was utilized to measure emotion regulation. The Adolescent Resilience Scale is a 21-item and three factor (novelty seeking, emotion regulation, and positive future orientation) Likert scale instrument measure adolescent’s level of resilience. The emotional regulation scale consists of 9 items with response options ranging from 1 = Definitely No to 5 = Definitely Yes. Items for the scale ask respondents about their abilities to remain calm, persevere during adversity, and fluctuations or difficulties with mood and emotion management. Oshio et al. (2002) report adequate levels of reliability for the emotional regulation scale with a Cronbach’s alpha of .77. The Cronbach’s alpha produced by the current sample was slightly higher than the previously recorded alpha at .78.

Hispanic/Latino Acculturation Index

A shortened and slightly modified version of the Hispanic Acculturation Index (Archuleta 2012) was utilized to measure enculturation to Hispanic/Latino culture and acculturation to White American culture. The full version of the scale demonstrated convergent validity with the Mexican-American/Spanish (r = .83) and Anglo or White American (r = .68, p < .01) subscales of the Orthogonal Cultural Identification Scale (Beauvais and Oetting 2000) as well as discriminant validity with the Social Support Appraisal Scale (r = −.05, p = .24; r = .10, p < .01). The full version of the HAI demonstrated acceptable reliability for the Hispanic/Latino (α = .96) and White American (α = .88) scales. The shortened version of each scale consists of five items asking respondents about their preferences regarding language use (e.g., I prefer to speaking Spanish) and social relationships (e.g., I prefer relationships with White Americans) related to Hispanic/Latino and White American culture. Response options for the scale range from 0 = Strongly Disagree to 10 = Strongly Agree utilizing a semantic differentiate format which permits greater sensitivity when compared to most Likert scale instruments. Sample alpha coefficients indicate adequate levels of reliability for the Hispanic/Latino acculturation scale (α = .77) but only minimally acceptable levels of reliability for the White American scale (α = .68) of the HAI.

Psychological Well-Being Scales

The environmental mastery and positive relations with others scales (Ryff 1989; Ryff and Keyes 1995) were utilized to measure these areas of psychological well-being. The environmental mastery subscale consists of 9-items and measures an individual’s sense of mastery in managing an environment, the extent to which they can control activities in their life, the extent to which individuals are overwhelmed by activities in their life, and individual’s time management. Ryff and Keyes (1995) found that environment mastery loaded as a factor on psychological and subjective well-being. The Positive Relations with Others scale also consists of 9-items and measures the extent to which individuals have warm, trusting relationships as well as their capacity for building those relationships through affection, empathy, reciprocity, and intimacy (Ryff 2014). In addition, a single item indicator drawn from the Purpose in Life Scale associated with psychological well-being was used to represent respondents’ future orientation and satisfaction with past accomplishments. Response options for these items range from 1 = Strongly Disagree to 6 = Strongly Agree. Previous reliability for the 14-item version of the Environmental Mastery (α = .86) and Positive Relations with Others (α = .88) scales was acceptable. However, the 9-item versions of these scale produced minimally acceptable (Environmental Mastery α = .67) and adequate levels (Positive Relations with Others α = .75) of reliability for the current sample.

Social Wellbeing Scale

The Social Integration subscale from the Social Wellbeing scale (Keyes 1998) was utilized to measure the level of community and social integration among Latino youth. The Social Integration subscale consists of 7 Likert Scale items measuring the perceived level of acceptance by his/her community, comfort with community members, and value and support provide by the community (Keyes 1998). Response options for the scale range from 1 = Strongly Disagree to 6 = Strongly Agree. The five-factor structure of the full scale indicated appropriate model fit compared to other factor structures tested with GIF = .86 and produced a Chi square to degrees of freedom ratio of 2.01. The author reports a previous reliability of α = .81 for the social integration scale. The social wellbeing scale demonstrated convergent validity with age and education indicating that social wellness is stratified by social status similar to other aspects of health (Keyes 1998). A modified version of the social integration scale (six-item version of the scale) was utilized to improve its reliability. Despite reverse coding item asking respondents whether the community would take them seriously if they had something to say, the item was still negatively correlated with other social integration items. Following the removal of this item, the social integration scale demonstrated adequate levels of reliability (α = .72).

Analytic Strategy

Hierarchical multiple regression was utilized to determine the portion of variance in emotion regulation accounted for by sets of variables. Demographic variables were entered into the first step of the model to control for potential differences in gender and age. Acculturation variables were entered into the second step of the model to determine the contribution of acculturation variables prior to controlling for differences in psychological and social wellbeing. Previous research has revealed conditional relationships between acculturative components (Archuleta and Teasley 2013) leading to the addition of an interaction term that may account for the conditional circumstance under which acculturation may relate to emotion regulation. The entry of acculturation variables is consistent with theoretical models of acculturative stress which recognize that acculturation is mediated and moderated by a variety of factors that contribute to acculturative stress and psychological distress (see Berry 2006b). To further explore the interaction term, a computation tool called PROCESS was entered into SPSS to utilize the Johnson–Newman technique to identify regions of significance for values of White American acculturation moderating Hispanic/Latino enculturation on emotion regulation. Probing the interaction term is necessary because it helps to define the parameters of statistical significance for simple slopes defining the limitations of the interactive relationship while providing additional detail about how the slope changes across the continuum of values produced by the moderator (Hayes 2013; Hayes and Matthes 2009).

Results

Table 1 provides the bivariate correlations between study variables and emotion regulation as well as means and standard deviations for each variable. Social integration, positive relationships with others, environmental mastery, and purpose in life were significantly related to emotion regulation. However, it is unclear whether all variables uniquely explain some portion of the variance in emotion regulation.

The first step of the HMR model containing demographic variables and the second step of the model adding acculturation variables and the acculturation interaction term did not produce a statistically significant F test. Table 2 provides results for each step of the hierarchical regression model. Variables representing psychological and social well-being were entered in the third step of the model. The final model accounted for 66 % of the variance in emotion regulation. The model variables White American acculturation (t = 2.28, p = .03), Hispanic acculturation (t = 3.01, p = .00), White American*Hispanic Interaction (t = −3.14, p = .00), positive relationships with others (t = 2.34, p = .02), environmental mastery (t = 2.24, p = .03), and purpose in life (t = 2.63, p = .01) were statistically significant. Figure 1 plots the interaction between low and high levels of enculturation and acculturation on emotional regulation among Latinos. The Johnson-Newman Technique was utilized to explore the interaction effect between White American and Hispanic acculturation. Table 3 provides the effect for Hispanic enculturation on emotion regulation at varying values of White American acculturation. Results from the test indicate two regions of significance (p < .05) with increases in White American acculturation and Hispanic enculturation scores between 0 and 2.1 producing positive unstandardized coefficients (.25 to .11) and scores between 5.88 and 8.4 producing negative unstandardized coefficients (−.13 to −.30) related to emotion regulation.

Table 2 Hierarchical regression model (N = 48) for wellbeing and acculturation on emotion regulation
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Table 3 Unstandardized conditional effects for cultural of origin enculturation on resilience at specific levels of White American acculturation
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Limitations

The generalizability of these results represents a limitation to this study. The sample size for the study is relatively small, despite meeting power requirements. In addition, the sample is largely composed of youth of Cuban nativity with refugee status which may significantly differ from other Hispanic youth’s experiences. Moreover, all participants attend an ESL school that is preparing students to transition into a traditional school environment with an ESL component which may not be typical of other school structures for youth who may require additional English proficiency. The single item measure of purpose of life also represents a limitation given that such indicators produce low reliability estimates compared to multi-items measures.

Discussion

Several findings emerge from this study which may prove useful in understanding the experiences of Latino youth related to acculturation and emotion regulation. Consistent with previous findings related to other mental health related outcomes (e.g., acculturative and economic stress), acculturation did not reveal a direct relationship but rather a conditional relationship with emotion regulation. Findings indicate that individuals maintaining high levels of Hispanic enculturation and high levels of acculturation to White American culture report lower levels of emotion regulation. Moreover, low levels of linguistic and social acculturation to White American culture and high enculturation to Hispanic culture relates to higher levels of emotion regulation. Various psychological factors reflecting positive functioning also related to emotion regulation. Positive social relationships, environmental mastery, and purpose in life were all positively related to emotion regulation and explained the greatest amount of variance. Despite being correlated with emotion regulation, social integration was not related to emotion regulation after controlling for other variables related to psychological well-being, acculturation, and demographics in the final model. Positive social relationships are likely one of the major benefits of social integration and may account for the non-significant relationship.

Biculturalism or integration has often been perceived as the most effective strategy or balance between cultures that result in the most favorable outcomes for Latinos/as attempting to manage their emersion in two cultures (Gonzales et al. 2010). However, Schwartz et al. observed varying levels of biculturalism when dividing individuals into latent classes based on their acculturation responses. The emergence of these results indicate that high levels of biculturalism, or at least attempts to maintain high levels of both cultures, may pose some difficulty for first generation youth attempting to adapt to a variety of social and cultural transitions. Therefore, the level of biculturalism may make a meaningful difference and not unilaterally result in better outcomes. However, these relationships should be observed over a longitudinally with larger samples to determine whether initial difficulties subside and result in high intercultural capabilities and abilities to regulate their emotions or persist and result in greater difficulties with emotion regulation.

Several factors representing psychological well-being were also related to emotion regulation. Environmental mastery, reflecting an individual’s ability to manage complex environments and access needed resources, is likely important when managing situations that may elicit intense emotions. First generation youth must manage a variety of environmental and contextual demands amidst two distinct cultures and across systems (e.g., micro, exo, and macro) that create complex situations requiring different forms of navigation to adapt. Environmental mastery may help youth manage situations that evoke intense emotion by accessing resources that assist in meetings his or her needs or restricting the potential burdens of environmental demands. Positive relationships with others likely maintains a similar relationship by providing access to forms of social support that assist in employing emotion regulation strategies or by enhancing emotion regulation abilities. Moreover, negative relationships with others may both initiate intense emotions and provide fewer opportunities for modeling positive emotion regulation strategies. Conversely, individuals with low emotion regulation abilities may find it challenging to maintain positive social relationships (e.g., unable to demonstrate empathy or reciprocity) making it difficult to determine whether positive social relationships enhance emotion regulation or simply demonstrate one outcome of low emotion regulating abilities in the context of interpersonal relationships.

Purpose in life was also related to emotion regulation among Latinos youth and may assist individuals in regulating their emotions by providing a boarder existential context for understanding their current experiences. Moreover, Folkman (2008) argues that resilient individuals often utilize positive emotions to recover from negative emotion experiences. Having a sense of satisfaction and meaning in life likely elicits positive emotions when individuals appraise their sense of well-being in the context of stressful experiences. In addition, executive functioning is related to working memory and planning which are required for goal directedness and accomplishment but also contributes to emotion regulation (Zelazo and Cunningham 2007) establishing a potential link between certain aspects of purpose in life and emotion regulation. Helping youth find meaning in their current and past experiences may help to cognitively reshape negative emotions and prevent youth from becoming overwhelmed by emotion and feelings of despair when encountering stressful experiences. Moreover, promoting skills in these areas may also facilitate positive social and academic development by promoting factors that may help regulate emotion but also provide access to resources that may facilitate growth.

Understanding the relationship between psychological well-being, acculturation, and emotion regulation may be particularly useful for school personnel (e.g., principals, teachers, and school social workers) working with immigrant and refugee youth. Several interventions can be utilized to address the social and emotional difficulties and improve emotion and self-regulation for first-generation Latinos in school environments. Social Emotional Learning (SEL) interventions help to address internal and external behaviors often stemming from regulation difficulties and are beginning to recognize the role that cultural norms and sociocultural differences (e.g. cross-cultural skill development) play in shaping youths’ social and emotional responses across a variety of social contexts (Garner et al. 2014). Incorporating skills that enhance psychological and social wellbeing and factors that promote positive cultural adaptation into existing social emotional learning interventions may help to enhance their effectiveness and use with immigrant and refugee populations. In addition, SEL that promote flexible responses to academic and social demands may help to bolster cultural adaptation among refugee youth. However, it is important to recognize that different cultural groups may employ different strategies to regulate emotion which may or may not be consistent with the structural environments in which youth apply them (Gross and John 2000). This necessitates that interventions be adapted that help youth navigate different cultural environments in which emotions are expressed, and that schools embrace best practice models for cultural competence that help staff recognize incongruent strategies for managing emotions.

Other interventions such Trauma Systems Therapy (TST; Saxe et al. 2007) may be utilized by clinicians working across a variety of systems (e.g., school and family) with youth who have experienced significant trauma that may be associated with emotional, behavioral, and academic difficulties. TST, and the revised versions working with more specific groups (e.g., refugees), target emotion regulation difficulties among traumatized youth in their social environments including schools systems which provide significant and meaningful opportunities for social exchange (Saxe et al. 2007). Future interventions should seek to incorporate skills that enhance social and psychological wellbeing while further examining which aspect of wellbeing enhance emotion regulation in school settings.