We investigate two facets of emotional functioning

We investigate two facets of emotional functioning, which are grounded in the temperament and personality literature—negative emotionality and resiliency (Eisenberg et al., 2000; Eisenberg et al., 1997a; Eisenberg et al., 1997b; Eisenberg and Spinrad, 2004; Eisenberg et al., 2003). Negative emotionality is the propensity to experience depressed mood, anxiety, and irritable anger. Resiliency is the ability to flexibly adapt one\'s level of control—in either direction—in response to the demands of the environment. It involves thoughtful, deliberate control of behavior in challenging or stressful circumstances and freer histamine dihydrochloride in circumstances where it is appropriate (Eisenberg et al., 2000; Eisenberg et al., 1997a; Eisenberg et al., 1997b; Eisenberg and Spinrad, 2004; Eisenberg et al., 2003). This type of self-regulation is a critical aspect of emotional regulation (Eisenberg et al., 2010; Eisenberg and Sulik, 2012). Note that the construct of resiliency is not directly related to the idea of resilience to adversity. Rather, resiliency has its conceptual roots in the temperament-based work of the Blocks (e.g., Block and Block, 1980b), who identified the related construct of ego resiliency.
Materials and methods
Results
Discussion A main finding of this prospective study is that marijuana use in adolescence may impact later emotional functioning. Heavy marijuana users scored higher on negative emotionality than controls at the approximate ages of 20 and 23, whereas groups did not differ at approximately age 13, when heavy users initiated use. Furthermore, exploratory analyses revealed that negative emotionality decreased from early adolescence to young adulthood in controls—consistent with normative changes (Roberts et al., 2006)—but not in heavy users. Importantly, we observed an association between greater lifetime marijuana use occasions and higher negative emotionality at age 20, after controlling for early levels (i.e., at use initiation) of negative emotionality. These findings are in line with other longitudinal work showing that adolescent marijuana users had increased depression, anxiety, and suicidality in young adulthood, but marijuana use was not associated with premorbid differences in negative affect (Patton et al., 2002; Pedersen, 2008). Thus, the current results add to previous work supporting an association between early marijuana use and later negative affectivity (Chadwick et al., 2013; Chen et al., 2002; Lev-Ran et al., 2014; Patton et al., 2002; van Laar et al., 2007). We also investigated the impact of marijuana use on resiliency, as self-regulation plays a critical role in emotional functioning (e.g., Eisenberg and Spinrad, 2004; Eisenberg et al., 2010; Eisenberg and Sulik, 2012). We found no difference between groups in resiliency at the age of marijuana initiation, whereas differences emerged in late adolescence/early adulthood, with lower resiliency in the heavy use group. Although conceptualized as a temperament/personality trait, evidence indicates Sporozoans resiliency improves throughout adolescence and into adulthood in healthy individuals (Eisenberg et al., 2010; Eisenberg and Sulik, 2012). Here we found that resiliency increased over time in controls but not in heavy users. Furthermore, lifetime occasions of marijuana use was negatively correlated with resiliency, even after taking into account early level of resiliency. Resiliency is inversely related to depression and internalizing problems in children (Block and Kremen, 1996) and emerging adults (Taylor et al., 2014), and positively related to effective social interaction (Block and Kremen, 1996) and social status (Eisenberg et al., 1997b). A reciprocal longitudinal relationship has been demonstrated between resiliency and positive emotionality from adolescence to early adulthood, as well as with the effective management of negative emotions (Milioni et al., 2014). It is possible, therefore, that adolescent marijuana use may impact emotional functioning partially through an influence on resiliency; however further work in a larger sample is required to determine these longitudinal relationships.