Emotion Regulation and Memory Complaints in Egyptian Undergraduates

Students who reported greater use of either cognitive reappraisal or expressive suppression also tended to report fewer everyday memory lapses in a cross-sectional study of 1,287 undergraduates at Port Said University in Egypt. The association was statistically significant but weak, and it did not show that one strategy was more closely linked to perceived memory than the other. Researchers adjusted the analysis for sex, faculty and family income, finding that each one-point increase in cognitive reappraisal was associated with a 0.272-point lower memory-complaint score, while a one-point increase in expressive suppression was associated with a 0.270-point lower score. Because the study relied on self-reports and did not test memory objectively or establish the direction of the relationships, the results describe an association rather than a causal effect.

The finding challenges the study’s initial hypothesis that cognitive reappraisal would have a stronger beneficial association with subjective memory performance than expressive suppression. Reappraisal is an antecedent-focused strategy in which a person changes the meaning assigned to an emotionally evocative situation. Expressive suppression is response-focused and involves inhibiting the outward expression of emotion. The investigators proposed that both processes draw on limited executive-control resources that may also support attention, encoding and retrieval. Under that model, reappraisal could preserve cognitive capacity by reducing emotional interference, whereas suppression might require continued monitoring and inhibition. The questionnaire data did not directly test this mechanism, but the comparable regression coefficients suggest that the two strategies were associated with subjective memory in similar ways within this sample.

The study used a descriptive cross-sectional design with an analytical component and was conducted between December 2025 and April 2026. Seven faculties at Port Said University—Engineering, Medicine, Science, Specific Education, Law, Management Technology and Information Systems, and Physical Therapy—were selected by simple random sampling. Students within those faculties were approached in common areas and after lectures using convenience sampling. Of 1,365 students approached, 1,287 completed the questionnaire, a response rate of 94.28%. The median age was 20 years, with an interquartile range of 19 to 21. Most participants were Egyptian and lived in urban areas, while medical students constituted the largest faculty group. Although the sample exceeded the calculated minimum of 402, convenience recruitment within a single university limits how broadly the findings can be generalized to other Egyptian students.

Two validated questionnaires measured the main variables. The 10-item Emotion Regulation Questionnaire assessed cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression using seven-point response scales, from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree.” Six items measured reappraisal and four measured suppression, with total scores ranging from 10 to 70; higher values indicated more self-reported use of the strategies. The 16-item Prospective and Retrospective Memory Questionnaire assessed the frequency of reported everyday memory failures on five-point scales, with total scores ranging from 16 to 80. Higher scores represented poorer subjective memory performance because respondents reported more frequent lapses. Prospective-memory items concerned remembering intended future actions, while retrospective-memory items concerned recalling information from the past. Cronbach’s alpha was 0.756 for the total emotion-regulation scale, 0.748 for reappraisal, 0.668 for suppression and 0.864 for the memory questionnaire.

Participants had a median total Emotion Regulation Questionnaire score of 44, with an interquartile range of 37 to 51. Their median reappraisal score was 27, with an interquartile range of 22 to 32, and their median suppression score was 17, with an interquartile range of 13 to 21. The median total Prospective and Retrospective Memory Questionnaire score was 50, with an interquartile range of 43 to 58.5. Prospective-memory scores were slightly higher than retrospective-memory scores, with medians of 26 and 24, respectively. These figures describe the questionnaire responses of this cohort and do not establish that the students had measurable deficits in objective memory performance.

All emotion-regulation subscales were negatively correlated with memory-questionnaire domains, with every p-value below 0.001. Spearman’s rho coefficients ranged from −0.153 to −0.226. The strongest correlation was between the total emotion-regulation and total memory scores, at ρ = −0.226, indicating a weak inverse relationship. In multivariable linear regression, both reappraisal and suppression remained independently associated with lower memory-complaint scores after adjustment for sex, faculty and family income. Their coefficients were statistically indistinguishable, with a difference of −0.002 and p = 0.98. The model explained approximately 10.2% of the variance in total memory scores, with an adjusted R² of 0.093, underscoring that emotion regulation was associated with only a small portion of the variation in reported memory difficulties.

Sex, faculty and family income also showed associations with the questionnaire scores. Males reported higher expressive-suppression and total emotion-regulation scores than females, while females reported higher memory-complaint scores. Faculty affiliation was associated with both emotion regulation and memory scores. Academic grade was associated with emotion-regulation scores, whereas family income was associated with memory scores in the unadjusted analyses. In the adjusted model, males had memory-complaint scores an estimated 2.812 points lower than females, with a 95% confidence interval of −4.238 to −1.385. Students in every non-law faculty had higher scores than law students; the largest adjusted difference was for Physical Therapy students, whose scores were 4.993 points higher, with a 95% confidence interval of 2.154 to 7.832. Family income did not reach the study’s significance threshold in the final model, at p = 0.051.

The similar results for reappraisal and suppression may be related to the cultural setting, although the cross-sectional data cannot confirm that explanation. Emotional restraint can be more socially normative in Egypt and other collectivistic Arab societies, where suppressing outward displays may help preserve social harmony. A student who suppresses emotion in that environment may therefore experience the strategy differently from a student in a culture that places greater value on open emotional expression. The finding should not be interpreted as evidence that suppression is generally beneficial or interchangeable with reappraisal. The questionnaires measured how often students reported using each strategy, not whether its use was effective, appropriate to a particular situation or associated with better psychological outcomes.

Subjective memory performance reflects a person’s assessment of everyday memory functioning and can capture distress, metacognitive awareness and perceived cognitive strain as well as actual memory errors. Self-reported complaints do not always correspond closely to performance on objective memory tests. The researchers did not administer objective cognitive assessments or measure anxiety, depression, perceived stress, sleep quality and social media use, even though those variables may be associated with emotion regulation and subjective memory performance. Residual confounding therefore cannot be excluded. Recall bias and social-desirability bias could also have influenced questionnaire responses. The high response rate and large sample improve the precision of the reported associations within the participants, but they do not resolve these limitations or establish whether emotion regulation preceded changes in perceived memory.

The results identify emotion regulation as one possible area for future research, not a demonstrated target for improving memory. A longitudinal study could examine whether changes in emotional strategies precede changes in reported memory difficulties, while a multi-university study could test whether the pattern extends beyond Port Said University. Combining the questionnaires with objective neuropsychological assessments would help determine whether the observed relationships also appear in measurable memory performance. The present study does not support claiming that emotion-regulation training would improve memory, because no intervention was conducted. Its central finding is narrower: among the surveyed Egyptian undergraduates, more frequent reported use of both regulation strategies was associated with fewer reported memory lapses, but the relationship was weak, explained little of the overall variation and cannot be interpreted as causal.

Subject of Research: Associations between emotion-regulation strategies and self-reported memory performance in Egyptian university students

Article Title: Emotion regulation and its association with subjective memory performance among undergraduate students at port said university

Article References: Ismail, S. E., Sharaf Eldin, A. G., Sharaf Eldin, N., & Farrag, N. S. (2026). Emotion regulation and its association with subjective memory performance among undergraduate students at port said university. BMC Psychology, 14(1), Article 1507. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40359-026-05679-9

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1186/s40359-026-05679-9

Keywords: emotion regulation, subjective memory performance, memory complaints, cognitive reappraisal, expressive suppression, Egyptian students, cross-sectional study, Port Said University, Emotion, regulation, association, subjective