Emotion regulation strategy selection in daily life: The role of social context and goals

Emotion regulation motives in adolescence shape regulatory strategy use

INTRODUCTION

Emotion regulation (ER) motives (i.e., the reasons individuals regulate their emotions) are key factors influencing the development of adolescents' ER abilities. However, age- and gender-related trends in adolescents' ER motives, as well as their impact on the use of ER strategies, remain unclear.

METHODS

We recruited 5629 participants from two schools in Southwest China (M = 15.18, SD = 1.73; 45.11% male) to complete the Emotion Regulation Goals Scale and the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire. Linear and polynomial regression analyses were conducted to examine age- and gender-related differences in ER motive patterns. We then tested whether different patterns of ER motives were also associated with participants' habitual use of two common ER strategies.

RESULTS

This study revealed nonlinear and diverse age-related differences in adolescents' contra-hedonic and pro-social motives, with notable fluctuations in contra-hedonic motives. Boys exhibited higher levels of contra-hedonic motives, while girls showed higher levels of performance motives. Moreover, ER motives were significantly and broadly associated with individuals' habitual use of reappraisal and suppression. More specifically, pro-hedonic motives were associated with greater use of reappraisal, while contra-hedonic motives were linked to higher levels of suppression. Furthermore, instrumental motives (i.e., performance, pro-social, and impression management) were positively related to both reappraisal and suppression.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings enhance our understanding of how adolescents' ER motives vary by age and gender, as well as the crucial role different ER motives play in shaping patterns of ER strategy use.

Investigation of emotion regulation skills, salivary apelin, and serotonin levels in children in Türkiye: a cross-sectional study

PURPOSE

Little is known about the relationship between apelin and serotonin in emotion regulation. This study aimed to examine children's emotional regulation skills and salivary apelin and serotonin levels.

METHODS

This is a cross-sectional study performed in Türkiye. The research was completed with the participation of 146 children, 8-10 years old, from the general population. Emotion Regulation Skills Scale for Children (CERS) was used to assess children's levels of emotion regulation skills. Apelin and serotonin levels were examined by ELISA technique in saliva samples obtained from children.

RESULTS

A statistically significant correlation was found between the mean total score of the CERS and the mean apelin and serotonin levels (p ˂ .01). We found that females had higher emotion regulation skills compared to males, older higher than younger ones (p ˂ .01). The regression analysis results show that age and gender together explain 50.5% of the variance in CERS scores, while apelin and serotonin together explain 35.8% of the variance. When all four variables (age, gender, apelin, and serotonin) are included in the model, they explain 51.3% of the variance in CERS scores.

CONCLUSION

Older age and female gender explained most of emotion regulations skills.Key pointsIt was determined that the average salivary apelin and serotonin levels increased with increased age, and with increased age ERS also increased.More research is needed as this is the first time that the relationship between emotion regulation skills and serotonin and apelin levels has been examined.

Difficulties among Teachers' Emotional Regulation: Analysis for the Development of Student Well-Being in Chilean Schools

INTRODUCTION

Emotional regulation, a process that involves detecting and evaluating physiological signals in response to stressful events, is a crucial aspect of preparing students for school and ensuring teachers' effectiveness, stress management, and job satisfaction.

METHOD

This research, which adopted a quantitative approach, used a non-experimental comparative and cross-sectional design with a non-probabilistic sample by convenience. The study involved the participation of n = 1321 teachers (n = 125 preschool education; n = 645 primary education; n = 417 secondary education; n = 134 higher education).

RESULTS

The results revealed significant differences in the total scores of emotional regulation difficulty between teachers at the higher education level and primary and secondary school teachers, with the latter group showing higher levels of difficulty.

DISCUSSION

The findings suggest that the impact of emotional regulation difficulties affects professional performance, highlighting the importance of interventions aimed at improving teachers' self-efficacy, resilience, and emotion regulation to reduce emotional exhaustion.

CONCLUSION

From a practical point of view, our findings underline the importance of integrating emotional regulation training into pre-service teacher education and continuous teacher professional development programs. This could improve relational dynamics between students and teachers, fostering an environment conducive to teaching and learning processes.

The association between negative emotion differentiation and emotion regulation flexibility in daily life

Emotion differentiation emphasises labelling emotional experiences in a precise and context-sensitive way. Negative emotion differentiation (NED) has been found to be associated with mental health, where emotion regulation (ER) may act as a pathway. The current study aims to explore the association between NED and flexible ER implementation in daily life. Specifically, we examined how NED was associated with two aspects of ER flexibility: contextual synchrony and temporal ER variability. 101 college students (54% female; Mage = 20.24 years) reported their momentary emotions via a 7-day experience sampling protocol, and the intraclass correlation coefficients were calculated to reflect NED. In 10-day daily diaries, they also reported information about the most negative event during the day (i.e. event type, event intensity and ER goal) and how they regulated their emotions. The results revealed that individuals with high NED showed higher levels of synchrony between change in ER use and change in event type and ER goal. In addition, NED was positively associated with both within- and between-strategy variability in ER use. The results demonstrated that the ability to differentiate between negative emotions was related to higher ER flexibility, which shed new light on understanding the role of emotion differentiation in well-being.

Factor structure of the Chinese version of Emotion Regulation Goals Scale

Recent studies in Western cultures suggested emotion regulation goals have important implications for mental health. This study aimed to test the factor structure of Emotion Regulation Goals Scale (ERGS) in a Chinese cultural context. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were first used to examine the factor structure of the ERGS, and then reliability and validity tests were conducted to examine the psychometric properties of the ERGS. Results showed that the original five-factor model demonstrated fit during both EFA and CFA, and was thus adopted for further psychometric analyses. Most of the five factors were significantly associated with emotion regulation tendencies and negative emotional outcomes (e.g., depression), except for the non-significant associations between pro-hedonic goals and expressive suppression, and pro-social and impression management goals with depression. The ERGS also showed good internal consistency and split-half reliability. However, the test-retest reliabilities varied substantially across the five factors. The pro-hedonic goal had a higher test-retest reliability, whereas the contra-hedonic, performance, pro-social, and impression management goals showed lower values, especially the latter two. In brief, the ERGS showed a promising five-factor structure in assessing emotion regulation goals in Chinese cultural context.

Neural Effects of One's Own Voice on Self-Talk for Emotion Regulation

One's own voice undergoes unique processing that distinguishes it from others' voices, and thus listening to it may have a special neural basis for self-talk as an emotion regulation strategy. This study aimed to elucidate how neural effects of one's own voice differ from those of others' voices on the implementation of emotion regulation strategies. Twenty-one healthy adults were scanned using fMRI while listening to sentences synthesized in their own or others' voices for self-affirmation and cognitive defusion, which were based on mental commitments to strengthen one's positive aspects and imagining metaphoric actions to shake off negative aspects, respectively. The interaction effect between voice identity and strategy was observed in the superior temporal sulcus, middle temporal gyrus, and parahippocampal cortex, and activity in these regions showed that the uniqueness of one's own voice is reflected more strongly for cognitive defusion than for self-affirmation. This interaction was also seen in the precuneus, suggesting intertwining of self-referential processing and episodic memory retrieval in self-affirmation with one's own voice. These results imply that unique effects of one's own voice may be expressed differently due to the degree of engagement of neural sharpening-related regions and self-referential networks depending on the type of emotion regulation.

Bodies in action: Do contractive and expansive postures facilitate adaptive behavior?

The present study investigated the effects of expansive and contractive body displays on adaptive behavior and affective outcomes. Addressing limitations in past research, the effects were investigated in two different contexts (i.e., fear context and sadness context), compared with two types of control conditions and the moderating effects of motivational traits and symptoms of psychopathology were accounted for. A sample of 186 adults completed a fear experiment involving a mock job interview and a sadness experiment involving sad mood induction. For each experiment, participants were randomly assigned to one of four body manipulations: (1) expansive; (2) contractive; (3) active control (i.e., running in place); or 4) passive control (i.e., doing nothing). The primary outcome was adaptive behavior (i.e., appropriate job-interview behavior and positive recall bias). Secondary affective outcomes were emotions, action tendencies, and appraisals. Results revealed small, non-significant effects of body displays on primary outcomes (ds = 0.19-0.28). For secondary outcomes, significant effects were identified for positive emotions (ds = 0.33). Across secondary outcomes, pairwise comparisons revealed that expansive displays led to more favorable outcomes than contractive displays. For participants with the highest levels of depression, body display conditions led to less favorable affective outcomes than control conditions. The results suggest that body displays do not influence adaptive behavior within the investigated contexts. When compared to contractive displays, expansive displays were found to yield more favorable affective changes. Lastly, the findings indicate that further investigations into body manipulations in the context of psychopathology are warranted.

Examining Dyadic Stress Appraisal Processes Within Romantic Relationships from a Challenge and Threat Perspective

The biopsychosocial model of challenge and threat emphasizes how individuals appraise stress. Close relationship theories emphasize the interpersonal context, communication, and outcomes that arise from stress. We integrate these approaches by examining the individual variability surrounding appraisals of sufficient (more challenge, less threat) or insufficient (more threat, less challenge) resources to cope with demands and examining how these appraisals are associated with couples' behavior and feelings toward each other. Across three studies, 459 romantic couples (N = 918), and various potentially stressful in-lab conversations (extra-dyadic problem, dislikes about each other, dependability, and relationship conflict), we found evidence that stress appraisals indicative of more challenge and less threat were associated with more approach- and less avoidance-oriented behaviors within interactions. These approach- and avoidance-oriented behaviors were associated with greater feelings of relationship security and well-being after the conversation. However, whose (actors or partners) appraisals and behaviors were associated with security and well-being varied across the three studies. This work provides theoretical and empirical evidence for an interpersonal emphasis on intraindividual stress appraisal processes through a dyadic and close relationships lens. Our integrative theoretical framework breaks away from the idea that stress is inherently "bad" or "maladaptive" to show that appraising stress as more manageable (more challenge, less threat) is associated with more relationship behaviors that approach incentives and less that avoid threats and enhance feelings of relationship security and well-being.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42761-024-00235-3.

An integrative analysis of potential mechanisms of reduced positive affect in daily life in depression: an ESM study

Decreased levels of positive affect (PA) are a hallmark of depression. Current models propose as potential main mechanisms a dysfunctional use of emotion regulation (ER) strategies (i.e. dampening, positive rumination), and a maladaptive activation of pro-hedonic goals. However, the role of these mechanisms in PA in daily life remains understudied. We used a 10-day ESM design to assess how these mechanisms influence each other and contribute to depressive symptomatology-related low momentary PA in 139 individuals. Higher depressive symptoms were associated with lower PA, pro-hedonic goals, more frequent use of positive rumination, and higher use of dampening. Further, experiencing higher levels of PA predicted lower following time point use of dampening in individuals with higher symptoms. Finally, using positive rumination was more beneficial (i.e. predicted higher PA increases one moment later) for individuals with higher symptomatology. Our findings suggest that moment-to-moment changes in PA daily life are affected by, and have an effect on, both pro-hedonic goals and the use of dampening and positive rumination, highlighting specific cognitive-affective mechanisms that should be considered when designing interventions aimed at improving low PA characterising depression symptomatology.

The effect of emotion regulation strategies on nomophobia in college students: The masking role of resilience

College students have a high prevalence of nomophobia. However, research on the effects of emotion regulation and resilience on nomophobia in China is lacking. This research investigated how cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression strategies directly and indirectly affect nomophobia through resilience. Therefore, from March to May 2023, 756 university student volunteers (21.4 % men) were selected from a university in northeastern China for a questionnaire survey. Our findings suggest that college students' resilience has a masking effect on the relationship between cognitive reappraisal and nomophobia and can attenuate the negative effect of the frequency of using cognitive reappraisal strategies on nomophobia. The frequency of expressive suppression strategies directly and positively affected nomophobia. Early psychological interventions targeting resilience might be potentially effective in alleviating nomophobia among college students.

Attitudes, Emotions, and Emotion Regulation as Underlying and In-The-Moment Predictors of Men's Intentions to Perpetrate Sexual Assault: An Application of the I3 Model

Sexual assault is a significant problem among young men, and several underlying and in-the-moment factors are associated with this behavior. However, research has not examined how underlying factors may influence men's in-the-moment use of emotion regulation (ER) strategies, emotional experience during sexual situations, or intentions to perpetrate sexual assault. 187 young, single men from the United States who had sex with a woman in the past year completed questionnaires, projected themselves into hypothetical sexual scenarios, and indicated how they would behave when their partner withdrew consent during these scenarios. Participants were grouped into profiles of ER strategy use, which was used as part of a model predicting sexual assault perpetration. Specifically, men with greater hostility toward women were especially likely to use a "low acting with awareness, low resignation" profile, which was associated with greater anger, impulsivity, and intentions to perpetrate. This could be attributed to the increased cognitive load, increased rumination on their partner's refusal, or increased drive to obtain sex associated with this profile. Future research should replicate these results in a more diverse sample, and examine the efficacy of interventions redirecting participants away from a "low acting with awareness, low resignation" profile on sexual assault prevention.

Distinguishing Emotion Regulation Success in Daily Life From Maladaptive Regulation and Dysregulation

ACADEMIC ABSTRACT

This paper aims to motivate research on emotion regulation success in naturalistic settings. We define emotion regulation success as achieving one's emotion regulation goal and differentiate it from related concepts (i.e., maladaptive regulation and dysregulation). As goals vary across individuals and situations, it is insufficient to conceptualize emotion regulation success as maximizing positive affect and minimizing negative affect. Instead, emotion regulation success can be measured through novel approaches targeting the achievement of emotion regulation goals. In addition to utilizing novel data analytic tools (e.g., response surface analyses), future research can make use of informant reports and observing ambulatory behavior or physiology. Considering emotion regulation goals when measuring daily emotion regulation success has the potential to answer key questions about personality, development, and mental health.

PUBLIC ABSTRACT

People differ in how they want to feel in daily situations (e.g., excited) and why they want to feel that way (e.g., to make others feel better), depending on factors such as culture or age. Although people manage their emotions to reach these goals, most research assessing emotion regulation success has not taken individual goals into account. When assessing if people successfully regulate their emotions, most research in daily life has been focused on whether people feel more positive or less negative. To help study emotion regulation success in a more thoughtful and inclusive way, we propose a new approach to conceptualizing emotion regulation success that incorporates individual differences in what motivates people to regulate and discuss future research directions and applications.

The effect of age on emotion regulation patterns in daily life: Findings from an experience sampling study

The present experience sampling study investigated the effect of age on emotion regulation patterns (i.e., emotion regulation strategy effectiveness, variability, and differentiation) in daily life. The study further explored the implications of potential age differences in emotion regulation patterns for well-being. A sample of 406 adults (age range: 18-81, 62.8% female) were prompted five times a day for seven days to rate momentary emotions, emotion regulation strategy use, and emotion regulation strategy effectiveness. Based on these ratings, indicators of emotion regulation variability and differentiation were calculated. Well-being outcomes included daily positive and negative emotions, and symptoms of depression and anxiety assessed at baseline. The findings revealed reduced emotion regulation variability with age and a negative association between emotion regulation variability and well-being. There were no associations between age and emotion regulation effectiveness or differentiation. Emotion regulation effectiveness was associated with more positive and less negative daily emotions, and these associations were stronger for younger adults compared to older adults. Drawing on prominent lifespan theories, the findings may indicate that as people age, they select and apply a few strategies that they know will be effective given the context and their resources which leads to reduced emotion regulation variability but ultimately more well-being. Concerning emotion regulation effectiveness, the findings suggest that effectiveness is less important for emotional well-being in daily life in older adulthood possibly because well-being is determined by other factors (e.g., less frequent and more predictable stressors) with age.

Beyond strategies: The when and why of emotion regulation in aging

Most research to date on potential age differences in emotion regulation has focused on whether older adults differ from younger adults in how they manage their emotions. We argue for a broader consideration of the possible effects of aging on emotion regulation by moving beyond tests of age differences in strategy use to also consider when and why emotion regulation takes place. That is, we encourage deeper consideration of contextual factors that spark regulation as well as the goals and motives underlying individuals' attempts to regulate their emotions. There may be age-related variation in all, some, or none of these components of emotion regulation. Descriptive work across all dimensions of emotion regulation is necessary to test and refine theories of emotional aging.

Development and adaptation of the Emotion Regulation Skills Questionnaire for adolescents

INTRODUCTION

The ability to effectively regulate one's emotions is important for adolescent mental health. However, extant assessments of how adolescents regulate their emotions can be expanded upon in several ways, including incorporating more strategies (e.g., cultural and spiritual) and positive emotions, and being informed by adolescents and expert consultation during the development process. Thus, our study aimed to improve the construct validity of an emotion regulation measure by adapting and refining the Emotion Regulation Skills Questionnaire (ERSQ) into an adolescent self-report.

METHODS

We recruited 24 13-17-year-olds (12 males; 11 females; 1 gender fluid) via social media advertisement in the United States in 2020. We used an iterative qualitative approach in which we combined expert consultation, cognitive interviewing with adolescents, and top-down and bottom-up coding to review and provide feedback on the ERSQ.

RESULTS

Findings of thematic analysis showed that a need for clarity in wording and inclusion of strategy examples across all sections of the ERSQ was needed. Adolescents also identified the need to replace the Silly/Excited section with a more age-appropriate positive emotion section.

CONCLUSION

Findings indicate cognitive interviewing can be successfully completed in a virtual format when necessary, youth utilize a wider range of strategies to maintain or upregulate positive emotions than what is represented in current measures, and use of qualitative methods may have reduced construct underrepresentation and construct-irrelevant variance in the adapted ERSQ.

Longitudinal Resilience and Risk Factors in Pediatric Postoperative Pain (LORRIS): Protocol for a Prospective Longitudinal Swiss University Children's Hospitals-Based Study

INTRODUCTION

Chronic postsurgical pain (CPSP) is defined as pain that persists after a surgical procedure and has a significant impact on quality of life. Previous studies show the importance of psychological factors in CPSP, yet the majority of studies focused solely on negative emotions. This longitudinal observational study aims to broaden this knowledge base by examining the role of emotional state, emotion variability, emotion regulation and emotion differentiation on the child and the parent level for the development CPSP, and to describe pain and emotion-related trajectories following surgery.

METHODS AND ANALYSIS

We intend to include 280 children and adolescents aged 8-18 years with a planned orthopaedic surgery and their parents. A total of five assessment time points is planned: 3 weeks before surgery (baseline), 2 weeks after surgery (post) and 3 months (follow-up (FU) 1), 6 months and 12 months after surgery. At baseline and post only, children and parents are asked to complete a daily diary thrice a day for a week where they rate their current emotional state and their pain severity (children only). Emotional state ratings will be used to calculate indices of emotion variability, emotion regulation and emotion differentiation. Children and parents will complete questionnaires at each time point, including measures on quality of life, social support, sleep, and symptoms of anxiety and depression.To predict development of CPSP, generalised linear regression models will be used, resulting in ORs and 95% CIs. Pearson product-moment correlations between predictors and outcomes will be evaluated at each time point. The primary outcome of the prediction model is CPSP at FU1. For the trajectory analysis, the classification method K-means for longitudinal data will be used to determine clusters in the data.

ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION

The Ethics Committee of the Canton of Zurich, Switzerland, has approved the study (ID: 2023-01475). Participants will be compensated, and a dissemination workshop will be held.

TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER

NCT05816174.

Maternal alcohol dependence symptoms, maternal insensitivity to children's distress, and young children's blunted emotional reactivity

Maternal insensitivity to children's emotional distress (e.g., expressions of sadness or fearfulness) is one mechanism through which maternal alcohol dependence may increase children's risk for psychopathology. Although emotion dysregulation is consistently associated with psychopathology, it remains unclear how or why alcohol dependence's effects on caregiving responses to children's distress may impact children's emotion regulation over time, particularly in ways that may engender risks for psychopathology. This study examined longitudinal associations between lifetime maternal alcohol dependence symptoms, mothers' insensitivity to children's emotional distress cues, and children's emotional reactivity among 201 mother-child dyads (Mchild age = 2.14 years; 56% Black; 11% Latino). Structural equation modeling analyses revealed a significant mediational pathway such that maternal alcohol dependence predicted increases in mothers' insensitivity to children's emotional distress across a one-year period (β = .16, p = .013), which subsequently predicted decreases in children's emotional reactivity one year later (β = -.29, p = .009). Results suggest that mothers with alcohol dependence symptoms may struggle to sensitively respond to children's emotional distress, which may prompt children to suppress or hide their emotions as an adaptive, protective strategy. The potential developmental benefits and consequences of early, protective expressive suppression strategies are discussed via developmental psychopathology frameworks.

Investigating psychiatric symptoms as predictors of the reasons people do not regulate their emotions in daily life

Investigations into emotion dysregulation predominantly focus on ineffective strategy selection and implementation. However, little empirical attention has been given to the possibility that failure to engage in emotion regulation (ER) may also indicate emotion dysregulation, especially when the reason for not regulating suggests skill or motivational deficits. We randomly sampled ER strategy use up to six times per day for 5 weeks in 113 adults with elevated social anxiety. When participants reported not engaging in any recent ER, they indicated their reason for not regulating. Data were collected between 2018 and 2019. Participants reported not regulating in 60.9% of surveys. The most frequently endorsed reason for not regulating was "I was not experiencing any thoughts/feelings that I wanted to change," followed by "I did not want to put in the effort," then "I did not know what to do," and finally, "I did not think I was capable." After controlling for within- and between-person state affect, participants with lower trait-level social anxiety, depression, and emotion dysregulation scores were more likely to report no ER because they were not experiencing any thoughts/feelings that they wanted to change relative to the other three reasons that might reflect barriers to effective regulation. Trait-level generalized worry and alcohol use did not significantly predict between nonregulation reasons. Findings from these preregistered analyses suggest that not regulating-especially among persons higher in social anxiety, depression, and emotion dysregulation-may indicate ER skill or motivation deficits that point to opportunities for intervention. Results may not generalize to more demographically or clinically diverse samples. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Real-world flexibility in adolescent girls' emotion regulation strategy selection: An investigation of strategy switching

Adolescence is an important stage for the development of emotion regulation skills, especially for adolescent girls who are at elevated risk for the development of depression and anxiety. Although some emotion regulation strategies are more effective at helping adolescents regulate negative affect on average, research indicates strategy effectiveness varies with the context in which a strategy is deployed. Yet less work has been done examining which contextual factors are associated with adolescents switching emotion regulation strategies in their daily lives. This study examined individual and contextual factors related to negative interpersonal events that are associated with strategy effectiveness, including age, emotional intensity, perceived controllability, and co-regulatory support, and their association with adolescent emotion regulation strategy switching in daily life via ecological momentary assessment. Results indicated that adolescent girls differed in the degree to which they altered their emotion regulation strategies throughout their daily lives, and that switching strategies was associated with age as well as individual and within-person differences in perceived controllability, emotional intensity, and co-regulatory support. This study provides critical proof-of-concept of the utility of emotion regulation strategy switching as a measure of regulatory flexibility and highlights regulatory processes that may hold clues to the mechanisms of developmental psychopathology.

Mapping Interpersonal Emotion Regulation in Everyday Life

The growing literature on interpersonal emotion regulation has largely focused on the strategies people use to regulate. As such, researchers have little understanding of how often people regulate in the first place, what emotion regulation goals they have when they regulate, and how much effort they invest in regulation. To better characterize features of the regulation process, we conducted two studies using daily diary (N = 171) and experience sampling methods (N = 239), exploring interpersonal emotion regulation in the context of everyday social interactions. We found people regulated others' emotions nearly twice a day, regulated their own emotions through others around once a day, and regulated both their own and others' emotions in the same interaction roughly every other day. Furthermore, not only did people regulate others' emotions more often than regulating their own emotions through others, but they also put in more effort to do so. The goals of regulation were primarily to make themselves or others feel better, most often through increasing positive emotions, rather than decreasing negative emotions. Together, these findings provide a foundational picture of the interpersonal emotion regulation landscape, and lay the groundwork for future exploration into this emerging subfield of affective science.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42761-023-00223-z.

Emotion Regulation in Couples Across Adulthood

Intimate relationships are hotbeds of emotion. This article presents key findings and current directions in research on couples' emotion regulation across adulthood as a critical context in which older adults not only maintain functioning but may also outshine younger adults. First, I introduce key concepts, defining qualities (i.e., dynamic, coregulatory, bidirectional, bivalent), and measures (i.e., self-report versus performance-based) of couples' emotion regulation. Second, I highlight a socioemotional turn in our understanding of adult development with the advent of socioemotional selectivity theory. Third, I offer a life-span developmental perspective on emotion regulation in couples (i.e., across infancy, adolescence and young adulthood, midlife, and late life). Finally, I present the idea that emotion regulation may shift from "me to us" across adulthood and discuss how emotion regulation in couples may become more important, better, and increasingly consequential (e.g., for relationship outcomes, well-being, and health) with age. Ideas for future research are then discussed.

Habitual Expressive Suppression of Positive, but not Negative, Emotions Consistently Predicts Lower Well-being across Two Culturally Distinct Regions

Habitual expressive suppression (i.e., a tendency to inhibit the outward display of one's emotions; hereafter suppression) is often conceptualized as a maladaptive emotion regulation strategy. Yet, is this equally true for suppression of positive and of negative emotions? Across three studies and seven samples (total N > 1300 people) collected in two culturally distinct regions (i.e., Taiwan and the US), we examined the separability and distinct well-being effects of suppressing positive vs. negative emotions. Results consistently showed that (a) people suppressed their positive (vs. negative) emotions less, (b) the construct of suppression of positive (vs. negative) emotions was conceptually farther away from that of suppression of emotions in general, (c) suppression of positive and of negative emotions were only moderately correlated, and (d) only suppression of positive, but not negative, emotions, predicted lower well-being. An internal meta-analysis (k = 52 effect sizes) showed that these associations were robust to the inclusion of age, gender, and region as covariates. Future research may further probe the respective links between suppression of positive and of negative emotions and well-being across more cultural regions and across the life-span.

Sometimes you just can't: within-person variation in working memory capacity moderates negative affect reactivity to stressor exposure

The executive hypothesis of self-regulation places cognitive information processing at the center of self-regulatory success/failure. While the hypothesis is well supported by cross-sectional studies, no study has tested its primary prediction, that temporary lapses in executive control underlie moments of self-regulatory failure. Here, we conducted a naturalistic experiment investigating whether short-term variation in executive control is associated with momentary self-regulatory outcomes, indicated by negative affect reactivity to everyday stressors. We assessed working memory capacity (WMC) through ultra-brief, ambulatory assessments on smart phones five times per day in a 7-day ecological momentary assessment (EMA) study involving college-aged adults. We found that participants exhibited more negative affect reactivity to stressor exposures during moments when they exhibited lower than usual WMC. Contrary to previous findings, we found no between-person association between WMC and average stress reactivity. We interpret these findings as reflecting the role of executive control in determining one's effective capacity to self-regulate.

Profiles of Emotion Regulation Strategies and Intentions to Perpetrate Sexual Assault

Objective

Sexual assault perpetration remains prevalent among young men, and emotion regulation (ER) is a prominent contributor to sexual assault perpetration among young men experiencing anger or sexual arousal. However, little is known about the specific ER strategies which men use when perpetrating. Thus, the present study used latent profile analysis to group men into profiles based on their in-the-moment use of several ER strategies during two, hypothetical sexual situations: one which induced anger and another which induced sexual arousal.

Method

In total, 187 single, young, heterosexually active men from the United States provided responses to an online study, in which they projected themselves into two hypothetical sexual scenarios and answered questions regarding their use of ER strategies and intentions to perpetrate sexual assault after their hypothetical partner indicated she did not consent.

Results

Participants were grouped into four profiles based on their use of different ER strategies. Men in the "high acting with awareness, low resignation" profile reported lower perpetration intentions than men in the "low acting with awareness" or "moderate all strategies" profiles following both scenarios.

Conclusions

Men in the "high acting with awareness, low resignation" profile may have reported lower perpetration intentions because of the reduced cognitive load associated with acting with awareness relative to other ER strategies, and the increased self-efficacy to avoid sexual aggression associated with low resignation. Thus, future research should replicate the results with this profile in other contexts to determine its feasibility and effectiveness for reducing sexual assault in future interventions.

Estimating individual subjective values of emotion regulation strategies

Individuals have a repertoire of emotion regulation (ER) strategies at their disposal, which they can use more or less flexibly. In ER flexibility research, strategies that facilitate goal achievement are considered adaptive and therefore are subjectively valuable. Individuals are motivated to reduce their emotional arousal effectively and to avoid cognitive effort. Perceived costs of ER strategies in the form of effort, however, are highly subjective. Subjective values (SVs) should therefore represent a trade-off between effectiveness and subjectively required cognitive effort. However, SVs of ER strategies have not been determined so far. We present a new paradigm for quantifying individual SVs of ER strategies by offering monetary values for ER strategies in an iterative process. N = 120 participants first conducted an ER paradigm with the strategies distraction, distancing, and suppression. Afterwards, individual SVs were determined using the new CAD paradigm. SVs significantly predicted later choice for an ER strategy (χ2 (4, n = 119) = 115.40, p < 0.001, BF10 = 1.62 × 1021). Further, SVs were associated with Corrugator activity (t (5, 618.96) = 2.09, p = 0.037, f2 = 0.001), subjective effort (t (5, 618.96) = - 13.98, p < 0.001, f2 = 0.035), and self-reported utility (t (5, 618.96) = 29.49, p < 0.001, f2 = 0.155). SVs were further associated with self-control (t (97.97) = 2.04, p = 0.044, f2 = 0.002), but not with flexible ER. With our paradigm, we were able to determine subjective values. The trait character of the values will be discussed. PROTOCOL REGISTRATION: The stage 1 protocol for this Registered Report was accepted in principle on July 19, 2022. The protocol, as accepted by the journal, can be found at: https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/FN9BT .

The contextual goal dependent attentional flexibility (CoGoDAF) framework: A new approach to attention bias in depression

Successful adaptation to the environment requires attentional prioritization of emotional information relevant to the current situational demands. Accordingly, the presence of an attention bias (AB) for both positive and negative information may allow preferential processing of stimuli in line with the current situational goals. However, AB for negative information sometimes becomes maladaptive, being antithetical to the current adaptive needs and goals of an individual, such as in the case of affective disorders such as depression. Although difficulties in flexible shifting between emotional stimuli in depression have increasingly become a topic of discussion in the field, an integrative approach towards biased versus flexible emotional attentional processes remains absent. In the present paper, we advance a novel and integrative view of conceptualizing potentially aberrant affective attention patterns in depression as a function of the current contextual features. We propose that flexible emotional attention takes place as a result of attention prioritization towards goal-relevant emotional stimuli depending upon the current context of the individual. Specifically, the roles of context, distal and proximal goals, and approach and avoidance motivation processes are considered in a unified manner. The empirical, clinical, and interventional implications of this integrative framework provide a roadmap for future psychological and neurobiological experimental and translational research.

Emotional cherry picking: the role of personality and goal orientation in selective emotion regulation for musical practice

Introduction

Emotion regulation is an important part of optimising performance and successful goal pursuit in practice-based tasks such as making music. Musicians may regulate their own emotions during the course of their musical practice in order to improve their performance and ultimately attain their practice-related goals. The specific emotions they target may depend upon their personality traits but may also relate to the nature of their goal orientation, and the interaction between the two. This study investigates whether the emotions desired by musicians in their musical practice were dependent on their personality traits and Mastery goal orientation (the desire to master musical and technical skills).

Methods

Via an online questionnaire, 421 musicians completed a personality scale and answered questions relating to their mastery practice goals. They also completed emotion scales indicating how strongly they desired to increase or decrease the intensity of specific emotions when practicing.

Results

Overall, musicians preferred to up-regulate positive rather than negative emotions [paired t(420) = 58.13, p < 0.001]. Bayesian Mixed Effects models showed that personality traits affected musicians' desire to regulate specific emotions. For example, higher levels of Agreeableness predicted greater desire to increase positive but not negative emotions, whereas Extraversion predicted greater desire to increase anger [Est. = 0.05, SE = 0.03, Odds (Est. > 0) = 43.03] but not positive emotions. The inclusion of Mastery goal orientation either amplified or mitigated these effects in several cases, and also introduced new trait-emotion relationships. Findings confirm a general hedonic principle underlying the emotions musicians desired in their musical practice. However, predicted by personality traits, musicians also sometimes sought to increase the intensity of unpleasant emotions.

Discussion

These findings complement existing research that suggests that some Mastery-oriented musicians may seek an emotional state consisting of both positive and negative emotions. This and future studies on this topic may contribute to a better understanding of individual differences in emotion regulation ability as a potential aspect of individualised musical practice strategies.

A systematic review of associations between emotion regulation characteristics and inflammation

Elevated inflammation is a risk factor for many psychiatric (e.g., depression) and somatic conditions (e.g., rheumatoid arthritis). Inflammation is influenced by psychosocial processes such as emotion regulation. Characterization of which emotion regulation characteristics impact inflammation could help refine psychosocial interventions aimed at normalizing health-harming inflammatory activity for individuals with psychiatric and somatic illnesses. To investigate this issue, we systematically reviewed the literature on associations between a variety of emotion regulation traits and inflammation. Out of 2816 articles identified, 38 were included in the final review. 28 (74%) found that (a) poor emotion regulation is associated with higher inflammation and/or (b) strong emotion regulation skills are associated with lower inflammation. Consistency of results differed as a function of the emotion regulation construct investigated and methodological characteristics. Results were most consistent for studies testing positive coping/social support seeking or broadly defined emotion regulation/dysregulation. Methodologically, studies testing reactivity to a stressor, adopting a vulnerability-stress framework, or using longitudinal data were most consistent. Implications for integrated, transdiagnostic psychoimmunological theories are discussed, as well as recommendations for clinical research.

Do targets of ostracism truthfully communicate their emotional reactions to sources?

Ostracism triggers negative emotions such as sadness, anger, and hurt feelings. Do targets of ostracism truthfully share their emotions with the sources of ostracism? Drawing on past research on social-functional accounts of emotions and interpersonal emotion regulation, we investigated the possibility that targets may misrepresent their emotions (i.e., gaming emotions). We conducted three experiments (N = 1058; two pre-registered) using an online ball-tossing game, in which participants were randomly assigned to be included or ostracized. Consistent with the literature, we found that ostracized individuals were more hurt, sad, and angry than included individuals. However, we found little and inconsistent evidence that ostracized (vs included) individuals misrepresented their emotional reactions to the sources. Further, Bayesian analyses offered more support against misrepresentation of emotions. These findings suggest that targets of ostracism truthfully communicated their social pain to the sources.

Keeping Up Appearances: The Role of Motives and Utility Beliefs in Expressive Suppression

We examined the role of impression management motives and utility beliefs in predicting suppression. In Study 1, 222 participants were assigned one of four motives (warmth, competence, pro-hedonic, control) during a job interview and reported their strategy use. In Study 2, 150 participants completed 9 days of experience sampling surveys assessing momentary emotion regulation motives and strategy use. In both studies, participants reported suppression utility beliefs. Lab results suggested a decreased preference for suppression when pursuing warmth motives over competence motives. This effect did not emerge when examining daily motives. In both studies however, people believed it was more useful to suppress negative than positive emotions, and more useful to suppress negative emotion when appearing competent than warm. Utility beliefs did not predict suppression or moderate motive-strategy links. Overall, there was mixed evidence about how suppression links to specific motives. Results suggest suppression is perceived as useful for certain impressions, but people do not act in accordance with these beliefs.

Assessing Emotion Polyregulation in Daily Life: Who Uses It, When Is It Used, and How Effective Is It?

Most research on emotion regulation has focused on understanding individual emotion regulation strategies. Preliminary research, however, suggests that people often use several strategies to regulate their emotions in a given emotional scenario (polyregulation). The present research examined who uses polyregulation, when polyregulation is used, and how effective polyregulation is when it is used. College students (N = 128; 65.6% female; 54.7% White) completed an in-person lab visit followed by a 2-week ecological momentary assessment protocol with six randomly timed survey prompts per day for up 2 weeks. At baseline, participants completed measures assessing past-week depression symptoms, social anxiety-related traits, and trait emotion dysregulation. During each randomly timed prompt, participants reported up to eight strategies used to change their thoughts or feelings, negative and positive affect, motivation to change emotions, their social context, and how well they felt they were managing their emotions. In pre-registered analyses examining the 1,423 survey responses collected, polyregulation was more likely when participants were feeling more intensely negative and when their motivation to change their emotions was stronger. Neither sex, psychopathology-related symptoms and traits, social context, nor subjective effectiveness was associated with polyregulation, and state affect did not moderate these associations. This study helps address a key gap in the literature by assessing emotion polyregulation in daily life.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42761-022-00166-x.

Reappraisal affordances: a replication of Suri et al. (2018) and investigation of alternate predictors of reappraisal choice

Reappraisal affordances have recently emerged as an important predictor of emotion regulation choice . In a pre-registered replication of study 4 of Suri et al., 2018, we assessed the role of affordances and several other predictors of regulation choice. Participants (N = 315) read one of eight vignettes that varied in reappraisal affordance (high or low) and intensity (high or low). For each vignette, they rated hedonic and instrumental motives, affordances, intensity, importance, and long-term implications. One week later, participants re-read the vignette, chose between reappraisal and distraction, and rated their likelihood of using each strategy. Unexpectedly, participants rated predicted high affordance vignettes as lower in affordance than predicted low affordance vignettes. This difference from the original study may be due to sample differences: in the original study, participants were employees in a specific workplace and several vignettes targeted workplace activities. Nonetheless, we replicated the original finding that reappraisal affordances predicted reappraisal choice. The result held even when controlling for other contextual variables, which played a limited role in predicting emotion regulation. The results highlight the need to consider multiple aspects of context, including the research setting, when examining predictors of emotion regulation choice.

Intensity of Chronic Low Back Pain and Activity Interference: A Daily Diary Study of the Moderating Role of Cognitive Pain Coping Strategies

OBJECTIVE

Chronic low back pain (CLBP) has a significant negative impact on daily functioning, particularly for those with challenges coping adaptively with ongoing pain. However, the dynamics of pain coping in daily life remain understudied. Therefore, we examined the extent to which pain intensity interferes with daily activities, and assessed whether pain coping strategies (as assessed using daily diaries) moderated this link.

METHOD

We analyzed diary data from a sample of 84 participants with CLBP who completed daily diaries for up to 30 days rating pain intensity, pain interference with daily activities, and their use of pain coping strategies, including pain rumination (i.e., repetitive thinking about the pain and its causes), reappraisal (i.e., evaluating one's pain less negatively or more positively), and distraction (i.e., diverting attention from the pain). We hypothesized that these coping strategies would moderate the associations between pain and pain interference with daily activities, although in different directions.

RESULTS

Results suggest that pain rumination strengthens the association between pain intensity and pain interference both on the person and day level, while pain reappraisal and distraction weaken this association, at the day and person levels, respectively.

CONCLUSION

Our findings suggest that those who are more preoccupied with their pain and those who are less likely to reappraise their pain have more pain interference with daily activities. These findings build on prior work on pain coping by using daily diaries and highlight two pain coping strategies that have particular relevance for reducing the impact of CLBP in daily life.

Measuring Emotion Regulation Skill Use During Treatment: A Promising Methodological Approach

Emotion regulation has become ubiquitous in the study of psychopathology and a growing number of treatment outcome studies are collecting data on emotion regulation skill use. However, traditional measures of emotion regulation fail to capture important nuances in emotion regulation processes, their relationship to psychopathology, and how individuals use emotion regulation skills over time and across contexts. Novel methodologies are particularly needed for measuring emotion regulation in the context of treatment studies. In this article, we discuss a proposed methodology, the combination of ecological momentary assessment (EMA), and single-case experimental design (SCED), for measuring emotion regulation strategy use in the context of treatment outcome studies. To inform this discussion, we provide a brief overview of common approaches to assessing emotion regulation skill use in the context of treatment outcome research. We then describe the utility of intensive data capture (EMA) in the context of idiographic treatment studies (SCED), present a case study to illustrate the different uses of data collected through EMA in the context of a SCED study, and discuss considerations for implementing this method in clinical practice.

Believe, express, and enjoy: utility beliefs about social emotion expression consistently predict satisfactory outcomes

The present study investigates the association between people's beliefs about emotion and their overall satisfaction with a social interaction. We focus on three specific aspects to examine this association: (a) utility beliefs-a dimension of emotion beliefs; (b) emotion expression-an emotion channel; and (c) four social emotions-anger, other-embarrassment, gratitude, and other-pride. We examine whether people's utility beliefs about expressing a social emotion can predict their evaluation of a social interaction when they express (vs. suppress) their social emotion. Results (N = 209) consistently show that when people express their social emotion, their utility beliefs positively predict their satisfaction with an event. However, when people suppress their gratitude, their utility beliefs negatively predict their satisfaction, an effect not observed in the other three emotion events. These findings corroborate the claim that emotion beliefs impact people's emotional lives. Implications for research on emotion beliefs and motivated emotion regulation are discussed.

Components of emotion regulation flexibility and psychosis: The association between psychosis-proneness and context sensitivity

OBJECTIVES

Emotion regulation flexibility has been conceptualized as a multi-componential construct involving context sensitivity, repertoire and feedback responsiveness. Psychosis research has yet to incorporate these new developments in the study of emotion regulation. Thus, we sought to advance even further the knowledge on emotion regulation in psychosis by adopting the emotion regulation flexibility approach as proposed by Bonanno and Burton (Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2013, 8, 591).

METHOD

In total, 401 participants completed 4 scales assessing the multi-components of emotion regulation flexibility and psychosis-proneness.

RESULTS

Our results indicated that Context Sensitivity (i.e., Cue Absence) and Feedback Responsiveness (i.e., Evaluation) were associated with psychosis-proneness. Cue absence was specifically associated with the positive dimension, while both Cue Absence and Enhancement ability were associated with the negative dimension.

CONCLUSIONS

Overall, our results suggest that emotional context insensitivity is the most relevant component of regulatory flexibility in the case of psychosis-proneness. Thus, the disruption in this first step of flexible emotion regulation might be already present in those prone to psychosis. Difficulties in decoding appropriately the contextual cues might further disrupt the other steps of emotion regulation contributing to the psychotic (-like) experiences. This study needs replication in clinical and non-clinical samples.

The role of strategy-use and parasympathetic functioning in maternal emotion regulation

Research has recognized that parental emotion regulation influences whether parents respond sensitively to their children in challenging parenting situations. However, parental emotion regulation is usually assessed using questionnaires that are not about parenting, rather than through examining parents' reaction to specific parenting situations that might evoke negative emotions. This study investigates individual differences in mothers' emotion regulation during parenting, specifically examining the relation between their subjective negative emotions and observed parenting behaviors and whether this relation is moderated by cognitive (strategies to manage negative emotions) and physiological (resting baseline and reactivity of respiratory sinus arrhythmia; RSA) processes. Data of 157 mothers' self-reported negative emotions and strategy-use, their RSA, observed maternal responsiveness, and their preschool-age children's (30-60 months, 49.7% female) challenging behaviors were collected during a Wait Task, in which mothers told children to wait before opening an appealing gift. Regression analysis indicated that, after controlling for how challenging children were, mothers' level of negative emotion was not associated with observed level of maternal responsiveness. In line with hypotheses, the association was moderated by mothers' resting RSA and the extent to which they suppressed negative emotions. However, contrary to hypotheses, the association was not moderated by use of reappraisal, distraction, or rumination, or RSA reactivity. The significant findings suggest that, although mothers' subjective experiences of negative emotions are not necessarily related to less responsive parenting behaviors, the link between maternal emotions and parenting behavior may indicate differences in how mothers engage cognitive strategies as well as their physiological regulation capacity. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Interoceptive attention facilitates emotion regulation strategy use

Background

Method

Results

Conclusions

Adolescents suppress emotional expression more with peers compared to parents and less when they feel close to others

Adolescence is characterized by frequent emotional challenges, intense emotions, and higher levels of expressive suppression use than found in older populations. While evidence suggests that contingent expressive suppression use based on context is the most functional, it remains unclear whether adolescents use expressive suppression differentially based on social context. Because the peer relationship is highly salient in adolescence, the current study was designed to assess whether adolescents use expressive suppression differentially based on their social context. Adolescents (N = 179, M_age  = 13.94, 49.2% female) reported emotional events using experience sampling via a smartphone application for 14 days. Multilevel modeling revealed that adolescents used less expressive suppression when they were alone compared with when they were with people, and used more expressive suppression when they were with their peers compared with when they were with family. In addition, more closeness with family predicted less overall expressive suppression use, while closeness with peers did not influence the level of expressive suppression use within the peer context. We discuss the importance of peer relations in adolescence and the relationship between closeness and emotional expression.

Direct and Indirect Effects of Strength-Based Parenting on Depression in Chinese High School Students: Mediation by Cognitive Reappraisal and Expression Suppression

PURPOSE

A growing amount of research has been dedicated to the protective role of strength-based parenting in psychological distress. Strength-based parenting is a style of parenting in which parents are conscious of their children's strengths, and encourage them to develop and make use of those strengths. However, the mechanisms linking strength-based parenting to depression are not well known. Drawing on the social-emotional learning model, this study examined the association between strength-based parenting and depression and the indirect role of emotion regulation (ie, cognitive reappraisal and expression suppression).

MATERIALS AND METHODS

A total of 750 Chinese middle school students from two middle schools completed questionnaires comprising the Strength-based Parenting Scale, the Emotion Regulation Scale, the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depressive Scale, and sociodemographic characteristics. A total of 695 students provided accurate responses to the two validity check questions, and were thus retained in the final study sample. Of the final sample, 348 (50.1%) were girls, and the respondents overall had an average age of 16.22 years. The direct and indirect paths from strength-based parenting to depression were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

RESULTS

The results showed that strength-based parenting negatively predicted depression and cognitive reappraisal, while strength-based parenting positively predicted depression. Strength-based parenting indirectly predicted depression through cognitive reappraisal and expression suppression.

CONCLUSION

These findings suggest an underlying process by which high strength-based parenting resists depression by increasing cognitive reappraisal and decreasing expression suppression. It is necessary to implement a comprehensive intervention strategy that focuses on strength-based parenting and emotion regulation (eg, cognitive reappraisal).

Planning with Theory of Mind

Understanding Theory of Mind should begin with an analysis of the problems it solves. The traditional answer is that Theory of Mind is used for predicting others' thoughts and actions. However, the same Theory of Mind is also used for planning to change others' thoughts and actions. Planning requires that Theory of Mind consists of abstract structured causal representations and supports efficient search and selection from innumerable possible actions. Theory of Mind contrasts with less cognitively demanding alternatives: statistical predictive models of other people's actions, or model-free reinforcement of actions by their effects on other people. Theory of Mind is likely used to plan novel interventions and predict their effects, for example, in pedagogy, emotion regulation, and impression management.

Dynamics of attachment and emotion regulation in daily life: uni- and bidirectional associations

Attachment theory proposes that the activation of the attachment system enacts emotion regulation (ER) to maintain security or cope with insecurity. However, the effects of ER on attachment states and their bidirectional influences remain poorly understood. In this ecological momentary assessment study, we examined the dynamics between attachment and ER. We hypothesised that attachment states and ER influence each other through time. Specifically, we hypothesised bidirectional short-term cycles between state attachment security and reappraisal, state attachment anxiety and rumination, and state attachment avoidance and suppression. We also tested how trait attachment is related to state attachment and ER. One hundred twenty-two participants (M_age = 26.4) completed the Experiences in Close Relationship-Revised and reported state attachment and ER seven times daily for seven days. The results were only partly consistent with our cycle hypotheses yet revealed a cycle between low state attachment security and rumination that was attenuated by reappraisal. Moreover, rumination and suppression predicted increased insecure states, and reappraisal predicted increased secure and insecure states. Finally, trait attachment showed associations with state attachment and ER. Our study suggests regulatory dynamics between attachment and ER and opens important questions about their functional relationship in maintaining attachment-related behavioural patterns and emotional well-being.

Social Support Predicts Differential Use, but not Differential Effectiveness, of Expressive Suppression and Social Sharing in Daily Life

While emotion regulation often happens in the presence of others, little is known about how social context shapes regulatory efforts and outcomes. One key element of the social context is social support. In two experience sampling studies (Ns = 179 and 123), we examined how the use and affective consequences of two fundamentally social emotion-regulation strategies-social sharing and expressive suppression-vary as a function of perceived social support. Across both studies, we found evidence that social support was associated with variation in people's use of these strategies, such that when people perceived their environments as being higher (vs. lower) in social support, they engaged in more sharing and less suppression. However, we found only limited and inconsistent support for context-dependent affective outcomes of suppression and sharing: suppression was associated with better affective consequences in the context of higher perceived social support in Study 1, but this effect did not replicate in Study 2. Taken together, these findings suggest that the use of social emotion-regulation strategies may depend on contextual variability in social support, whereas their effectiveness does not. Future research is needed to better understand the circumstances in which context-dependent use of emotion regulation may have emotional benefits, accounting for personal, situational, and cultural factors.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42761-022-00123-8.

Ecological momentary assessment of affect in depression-prone and control samples: Survey compliance and affective yield

BACKGROUND

Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) is a high-frequency ambulatory data collection approach that has come to be widely used in emotion research. It therefore is timely to examine two features of EMA needed for a successful study: compliance with survey prompts and high affective yield (survey prompts that capture affect experience). We posit that compliance may be subject to temporal variation (time-of-day, days in study) and individual differences (depression history), and that affective yield may also differ by social context.

METHODS

We examined these issues in a sample of 318 young adults (Mage = 24.7 years, SD = 2.7), including those with current depression (n = 28), remitted depression (n = 168) and never-depressed controls (n = 122) who participated in a 7-day EMA protocol of negative and positive affect (NA and PA, respectively).

RESULTS

The overall compliance rate was 91% and remained stable across the survey week. However, subjects were significantly less likely to respond to the first daily prompt compared to those that followed. The likelihood of capturing NA and PA decreased with each EMA protocol day, and affective yield across social contexts differed by participants' depression status.

LIMITATIONS

The sample was largely comprised of White young adults. Relative to the remitted and control groups, the sample size for the currently depressed was unbalanced.

CONCLUSION

Researchers can optimize compliance and affective yield within EMA by considering depression, time-of-day, study duration, and social context. Clinicians using EMA to monitor affect may benefit from considering these parameters.

Negative emotional reactions to criticism: Perceived criticism and source affects extent of hurt and relational distancing

Criticism is commonly perceived as hurtful and individuals may respond differently to criticism originating from different sources. However, the influence of an individual’s perception of criticism in their social relationships on negative emotional reactions to criticism has not been examined across different relational contexts. The present study investigated the influence of perceived criticism and relational contexts–mother, father, romantic partner, and workplace supervisor–on the feelings of hurt and relational distancing experienced upon receiving criticism. Participants (N = 178) completed the Perceived Criticism Measure and read vignettes describing scenarios of personally directed criticism in the four relational contexts. Significant main effects of perceived criticism and source were found on levels of relational distancing. Participants who perceived their relational partner to be more critical experienced greater distancing upon receiving criticism from them. Greater relational distancing was experienced for criticism received from workplace supervisors compared to mothers, fathers and romantic partners. Results indicate that emotional reactions and relationship outcomes in response to criticism can differ based on individual differences and relational context, suggesting their role in relationship maintenance and development of psychopathology.

Spontaneous suppression in dating couples: Social and physiological correlates of suppressing negative and positive emotions during negative and positive conversations

Suppression (i.e., inhibiting one's emotional expression) has typically been associated with social and physiological costs. However, recent theorizing calls into question the inevitability of these costs. The present study takes a more nuanced approach and examines the social and physiological correlates of spontaneous (i.e., uninstructed) suppression when considering two potentially critical factors: the valence of the suppressed emotions (i.e., negative vs. positive) and the valence of the emotional context in which emotions are suppressed (i.e., negative conversation vs. positive conversation). Specifically, dating couples (N = 196 couples) completed both a negatively-valenced and a positively-valenced conversation in the laboratory while their autonomic-physiological responses were recorded. After each conversation, participants rated 1) the extent to which they had suppressed their negative and positive emotions, 2) the quality of the conversation, and 3) how connected they felt with their partner. We used Actor-Partner Interdependence Models to estimate actor effects (e.g., association of one's own suppression and one's own connectedness) and partner effects (e.g., association of one's partner's suppression and one's own connectedness). Suppression was associated with lower conversation quality and connectedness for the actors but largely not for the partners, regardless of the valence of the suppressed emotions and of the context, even when adjusting for felt emotion. Additionally, suppression was consistently not associated with physiological responses of actors or partners. Together, these findings suggest that, during emotional conversations with one's romantic partner, spontaneous (unlike instructed) suppression is associated with social but not physiological costs for the self but not one's partner.

When and Where Do People Regulate Their Emotions? Patterns of Emotion Regulation in Unselected and Socially Anxious Young Adults

Introduction: The current studies examined how smartphone-assessed contextual features (i.e., location, time-of-day, social situation, and affect) contribute to the relative likelihood of emotion regulation strategy endorsement in daily life. Methods: Emotion regulation strategy endorsement and concurrent contextual features were assessed either passively (e.g., via GPS coordinates) or via self-report among unselected (Study 1: N = 112; duration = 2 weeks) and socially anxious (Study 2: N = 106; duration = 5 weeks) young adults. Results: An analysis of 2,891 (Study 1) and 12,289 (Study 2) mobile phone survey responses indicated small differences in rates of emotion regulation strategy endorsement across location (e.g., home vs. work/education settings), time-of-day (e.g., afternoon vs. evening), time-of-week (i.e., weekdays vs. weekends) and social context (e.g., with others vs. alone). However, emotion regulation patterns differed markedly depending on the set of emotion regulation strategies examined, which likely partly explains some inconsistent results across the studies. Also, many observed effects were no longer significant after accounting for state affect in the models. Discussion: Results demonstrate how contextual information collected with relatively low (or no) participant burden can add to our understanding of emotion regulation in daily life, yet it is important to consider state affect alongside other contextual features when drawing conclusions about how people regulate their emotions.