Expressive suppression and rumination mediate the relationship between frailty and depression among older medical inpatients

Emotion regulation mediates the relationship between social frailty and stress, anxiety, and depression

Social frailty refers to an inability to meet basic social needs and has been identified as a threat to physical and mental health. Although social frailty has been linked with many adverse health and well-being outcomes, potential mediators of the relationship between social frailty and well-being remain poorly understood. Emotion regulation refers to the capacity to alter the experience of emotions to behave in accordance with a desired goal. The present study was designed to provide the first direct test of whether emotion regulation mediates the relationships between social frailty and important well-being outcomes (stress, anxiety, and depression). A total of 790 participants completed validated measures of social frailty, stress, anxiety, depression, and emotion regulation. In line with our preregistered hypotheses, higher social frailty predicted increased stress, anxiety, and depression, and each of these relationships were partially mediated by emotion regulation capacity. These data provide novel evidence that emotion regulation abilities may serve as a protective factor against the negative consequences of social frailty.

Reappraising cognitive reappraisal: The taxing impact of emotion regulation on executive functioning in older adults

OBJECTIVE

Cognitive reappraisal (CR) and expressive suppression (ES) are two common emotion regulation strategies that share similar cognitive and neural underpinnings. Prior research has consistently shown that recent engagement in ES (both self-reported and experimentally manipulated) is associated with subsequent temporary decrements in executive functioning (EF). Thus far, only one study has examined the association between CR and EF, with null results. However, that study was limited by examining only zero-order correlations and by assessing only the speed, not accuracy, of EF performance. The present study examined multivariate relationships among recent CR, recent ES, and EF (both speed and accuracy), as well as the potential impacts of more chronic engagements in, and trait-level preferences between, the two emotion regulation strategies.

METHOD

Participants were 201 community-dwelling older adults aged 60 to 93 who had participated in three separate studies examining the relationship between self-reported emotion regulation and EF.

RESULTS

Recent CR was associated with EF performance accuracy above and beyond chronic CR. Both recent CR and ES contributed to EF performance accuracy uniquely beyond each other and beyond chronic and preferred emotion regulation.

CONCLUSIONS

Both recent ES and CR appear to have a deleterious impact on EF performance accuracy, potentially due to utilization of similar resources; both should be accounted for when assessing emotion regulation and its impacts on EF.