Evaluation of the validity of the Emotional Regulation Questionnaire in a Mexican sample and their correlation with empathy and alexithymia

The Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ) is widely used to measure the individual differences in two emotion regulation strategies: cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression. In this study, we examine the psychometric properties of the ERQ (Spanish version) in a Mexican community sample (N = 792). Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses demonstrated that the traditional two-factor model (comprising cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression factors) was replicable and an excellent fit to the data. ERQ cognitive reappraisal (α = 0.81) and expressive suppression (α = 0.76) scores had acceptable levels of internal consistency reliability. As expected, women tend to use less expressive suppression than men. We also assessed the correlations of both strategies with alexithymia and empathy. Cognitive reappraisal scores were negatively correlated with alexithymia and positively correlated with higher empathy measures, whereas expressive suppression scores were positively correlated with personal distress and alexithymia, and negatively correlated with cognitive empathy scales and empathic concern. We conclude that, similar to previous findings, the ERQ has strong psychometric properties in a Mexican community sample and can be used in a confident manner with other tests to complement the assessment of affective traits. In addition, considering previous suggestions of the association between emotional regulation strategies and different components of the empathic response, the correlations between empathy measures and the emotional regulation strategies shown in this study opens a pathway to further research such interactions.