Abstract:

The modern world challenges and demands (as the liquid age) place high demands on an individual´s personality and his/her effort to survive. To adapt to new social phenomena, such as online functioning, social networks communication or artificial intelligence massive introduction into our lives, increases the pressure on emotion stability (and emotion regulation) and at the same time an individual´s authenticity. University student´s emotion regulation training and facilitation is an inevitable need for 21st century adaptability skill. İme and Ümmet (2022) define emotion regulation as the ability to appropriately cope with life's difficulties and at the same time declare that the ability to regulate emotions has a positive effect on the psychological health of individuals. Authenticity as the ability to be oneself, to resist the pressures of the environment, is perceived as free expression of the real Self in everyday life including self-awareness and one's own emotionality knowledge (Kernis & Goldman, 2006) affecting one's behavior being in accordance with his/her own values, preferences and needs.
The study aim was to emphasize the importance of university student´s emotion regulation support and development in the emerging adulthood and to search for its connection to the authenticity. The research group consisted of 99 respondents (Mage=28.4; SDage=10.4; 23.2% of men), of which 62.2% were university students. The rest of the group were adults (min age 25, max age 66, who were not university students). All respondents were from Slovakia. Emotion regulation was assessed by Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ; Gross & John, 2003) and authenticity by Authenticity Scale (AS, Wood et al., 2008). Data were collected online, by intentional and accidental sampling.
The study results showed no statistically significant differences of emotion regulation and authenticity between the university students and a group of adults. There was no correlation between emotion regulation and authenticity for university students, however in the adult´s group there were statistically significant positive strong relation between suppression strategy from ERQ and self-alienation from AS (r= .64***) and statistically significant moderate relation between reevaluation from ERQ and acceptance of external influences from AS (r=-.34*) and self-estrangement from AS (r=-.44**). University students from the research sample have the same emotion regulation strategies and authenticity level as the adults, though, it seems these two constructs have not been internalized for the students yet, to be interrelated. The university students do not experience situations where they inhibit or modulate their emotional experiences as a situation of self-alienation (contrast between conscious experience and current experience), so their authenticity may not be manifested in emotionally contradictory situations and they may depart from their real self, i.e. from their own values, from objective information processing which can have a negative impact also on their mental health. Therefore, it is important to develop and facilitate both of these two abilities within university studies, not only from the point of view of mental health protection, but also to educate them how to be connected with their values, morals and independence.

Keywords:

Emotion regulation, authenticity, 21st century skills, university students, adults.