Abstract

The purpose of this study is to clarify the constructs of emotion suppression and help understanding on the multidimensional nature of emotion suppression by classifying constructs for suppression according to the KMW model. Also, this study examined the gender differences of emotion suppression. For this purpose, 657 adult male and female subjects were evaluated for attitude toward emotions, and difficulty in emotional regulation, as well as depression, state anger and daily stress scale. As a result of the exploratory factor analysis on the scales related to the emotion suppression factors, the emotion suppression factors corresponding to each stage of the KMW model were found to be ‘distraction against emotional information, ‘difficulty in understanding and interpretation of emotions’, ‘emotion control beliefs’, ‘vulnerability on emotional expression beliefs’. Next, the study participants were classified by performing a cluster analysis based on each emotion suppression factor. As a result, four clusters were extracted and named ‘emotional control belief cluster’, ‘emotional expression cluster’, ‘emotional attention failure cluster’, and ‘general emotional suppression cluster’. As a result of examining the average difference of male depression, depression, state anger, and daily stress for each group, significant differences were found in all dependent variables. As a result of examining whether there is a difference in the frequency of emotional suppression clusters according to gender, the frequency of emotional suppression clusters was high in men, and the ratio of emotional expression clusters was high in women. Finally, it was analyzed whether there was a gender difference in the effect of the emotional suppression cluster on psychosocial adaptation, and the implications were discussed based on the results of this study.