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Beginning college involves changes that can increase one’s vulnerability to loneliness and associated negative outcomes. Parent and friend relationships are potential protective factors against loneliness given their positive association with adjustment. The present longitudinal study, with data collection at baseline, 1 month, and 2 months later, assessed the comparative effects of self-reported parent and friend relationship quality on loneliness in first-year college students (N = 101; 80 female, Mage = 18.36). At baseline, parent and friend relationship quality were negatively associated with loneliness. Longitudinal data revealed that friend relationship quality interacted with time, such that its effects on loneliness attenuated over the course of 2 months. By contrast, parent relationship quality continued to predict lower loneliness 2 months post-baseline. These results highlight the importance of close relationships and suggest that targeting relationship quality could be effective in helping youth transition to college.

The tendency to evaluate ambiguous events negatively has been associated with anxiety disorders (Constans et al., 1999). Conversely, positive evaluations of ambiguity may promote flexible interactions with unfamiliar situations and confer resilience to anxiety. Ambiguity tolerance may be particularly adaptive during late adolescence and the transition to adulthood, when humans encounter novel challenges and navigate new social spheres. For many individuals, the transition from late adolescence to increasing independence and young adulthood aligns with the transition to college. Intriguingly, the first year of college often presents profound uncertainty, as individuals are placed in drastically new environments, introduced to new people, and faced with unfamiliar challenges. Moreover, the transition to college generally occurs during a time of development in which mental illnesses are likely to arise (Paus et al., 2008). Therefore, ambiguity tolerance may be particularly adaptive during this period of life. In particular, successful navigation of ambiguous situations, particularly in social settings such as dorms, classrooms, and school events, may promote healthy adjustment during this transitional stage. In this study, we are interested in whether positive behavioral and neural evaluations of social ambiguity predict successful transitions, indicated by anxiety levels, during the first year of college.

Prior research underscores the unique developmental challenges that arise during the transition to adulthood (Hoffman, Guerry, & Albano, 2018). This period of development--often called emerging adulthood--brings both rich opportunity and new challenges, as individuals navigate major life transitions, including increased independence, and new academic or vocational expectations. Indeed, it is during this window that they must meet educational objectives, forge financial and emotional independence, build lasting relationships, and further explore self-identity. One key marker of the transition to adulthood for many individuals is beginning college. While this transition can be exciting and rewarding, it can also be a significant source of stress. In fact, a concerning increase in psychopathology levels of anxiety and depression has been found among U.S. college students over the past decade (Conley, Kirsch, Dickson, & Bryant, 2014; Duffy, Twenge, & Joiner, 2019). However, less is known about what factors exacerbate or attenuate negative mental health outcomes among first-year college students. As such, the present longitudinal study sought to characterize risk and resilience factors that arise during the first year of college. Aside from this developmental period transitioning to adulthood being significant, experiencing a major life event such as living through a pandemic may immensely impact this transition to college. The SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) outbreak has initiated a cycle of events that have caused massive disruptions to college students’ daily routines, from transitioning from in-person classes to remote learning, to living in dense communal residential halls to being back at home with family. This, coupled with the political, social, economic, and public health crises occurring during 2020 has posed innumerable challenges for adjustment and wellbeing. While the magnitude of these experiences may vary by location and institution, understanding how young individuals cope with these challenges while simultaneously striving to establish their independence is a critical test case for characterizing psychological and contextual factors that may give rise to psychological risk and resilience. After initially beginning data collection at the start of the 2019-2020 academic year, the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States in March 2020 just as data collection was concluding. In response to the pandemic, the decision was made to continue tracking participants over time to examine whether the same risk and resilience factors could moderate coping in response to this unprecedented event. We thus also examined how coping strategy usage (i.e., emotion regulation strategy usage) interacted with the transition to college and the onset of the pandemic to predict adjustment and mental health changes in young adults. Understanding what contributes to individual differences in adjustment is essential for developing prevention and intervention programs that optimize outcomes during pivotal and profound life events. Prior work has linked emotion regulation strategy usage to both positive and negative mental health outcomes (Aldao, Nolen-Hoeksema, & Schweizer, 2010; Werner & Gross, 2010). Specifically, cognitive reappraisal is commonly referred to as the ability to change the interpretation of an emotionally eliciting event as being an adaptive emotion regulation strategy. Alternatively, expressive suppression involves suppressing the outward expression of an emotion and is linked to more maladaptive outcomes (Cutuli, 2014; Haga, Kraft, & Corby, 2009; Werner & Gross, 2010). To this end, we utilized questionnaire measures to examine how emotion regulation strategy usage and significant life events may interact to predict changes in anxiety five times during the first year of college and the COVID-19 outbreak.

Typologies organize knowledge and advance theory for many scientific disciplines, including more recently in psychological science. However, no typology exists to categorize use of emotion regulation strategies. This is surprising given emotion regulation skills are used daily and are robustly linked with mental health symptoms. We attempted to identify and validate a working typology of emotion regulation across six samples (Total N = 1492, from multiple populations) by using several computational techniques. We uncovered evidence for three types of regulators: an infrequently regulating type (Lo), a frequently regulating type (Hi), and a third type (Mix) that selectively titrates strategy usage. Individuals in the Mix type exhibited the most adaptive mental health symptoms. These differences were stable over time and across different samples. These results are important for basic understanding of emotion regulation and for informing future interventions aimed at improving mental health.

The transition from adolescence into adulthood is an understudied yet important phase of development. For many individuals, this transitional stage involves profound sociocultural adjustments, including the transition to college. The beginning of college often involves both challenges and opportunities as one adjusts to new academic and social environments. Individuals may be particularly vulnerable to loneliness during this transition, putting them at risk for both psychological and academic difficulties. Parent and friend relationships are potential protective factors against loneliness given their positive association with psychosocial adjustment. The present longitudinal study assessed the comparative effects of self-reported parent and friend relationship quality on loneliness, both at baseline and over time using 292 longitudinal data points, in a cohort of first-year college students (N = 101 individuals). At baseline, parent and friend relationship quality were negatively associated with loneliness. The magnitude of the association between friend relationship quality and loneliness was stronger than parent relationship quality and loneliness. Longitudinal data revealed that friend, but not parent, relationship quality interacted with the passage of time, such that the effects of friend relationship quality on loneliness attenuated over the course of two months. By contrast, parent relationship quality continued to predict lower loneliness two months post-baseline. These results highlight the importance of close relationships and suggest that targeting relationship quality – particularly with parents– could be effective in helping youth transition out of the home successfully. Findings are discussed in terms of potential avenues for prevention and intervention aimed at optimizing successful adjustments to college.