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.

Examining situational differences in momentary emotion differentiation and emotional clarity in everyday life.

People experience momentary fluctuations in how much they differentiate between emotions and how clear they are about what they are feeling. To better understand situational predictors of shifts in emotion differentiation and emotional clarity, we investigated whether individuals are more differentiated and clearer about their emotions in social situations (vs. alone) given that emotions fulfill important social functions. We tested if these within-person associations varied depending on socially relevant individual differences, including age, extraversion, and social connectedness. We also examined whether people are more differentiated and clearer in situations that have previously been processed (i.e., familiar situations) and if this effect was stronger for older (vs. younger) adults. Community adults (N = 290, aged 25-85 years) completed measures of extraversion and social connectedness and then were randomly prompted 6 times a day for 10 days to report on their current emotional experience and situation. Using multilevel structural equation modeling, social context was associated with less positive emotion differentiation and not associated with emotional clarity; these within-person associations did not differ by age, extraversion, or social connectedness. Individuals experienced more differentiated positive emotions and higher emotional clarity than usual when they were in more (vs. less) familiar situations. Familiarity was especially predictive of higher positive emotion differentiation among relatively older (vs. younger) adults. These findings suggest positive emotion differentiation, particularly in familiar situations could be a way in which the quality of one's emotional experience changes with age. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Everyday emotion regulation goals, motives, and strategies in current and remitted major depressive disorder: An experience sampling study.

People with major depressive disorder (MDD) report difficulties with emotion regulation (ER), particularly in habitual strategy use. We examined ER strategy use and other aspects of ER-desired emotional states (emotion goals) and reasons for ER (ER motives)-in current and remitted MDD. In a 2-week experience sampling study, adults with current MDD (n = 48), remitted MDD (n = 80), and healthy controls (n = 87) reported their negative affect (NA) and positive affect (PA), emotion goals (frequency, direction), ER motives (hedonic, instrumental), and ER strategy use (social sharing, acceptance, savoring, reappraisal, suppression, distraction). Multilevel modeling and Bayes factors were used to assess differences and similarities across groups. Compared to the remitted MDD and control groups, the current MDD group regulated emotion more frequently in general but showed weakened associations between initiating regulation and momentary affect and reported different emotion goal directions. Although all groups mostly reported emotion goals to regulate prohedonically (decrease NA, increase or maintain PA), the current MDD group was the most likely to try to amplify NA and PA simultaneously. Current MDD and remitted MDD groups endorsed hedonic motives more than controls, but the three groups did not differ in instrumental motives. The only group difference in ER strategy use was that the current MDD group used distraction more than controls. Most group differences in ER were between the current MDD group and controls, with the remitted MDD group and controls being quite similar. ER in current MDD is characterized by frequent regulation, weakened association between initiating regulation and momentary affect, increased hedonic-focused ER motives, and a greater use of distraction. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Age, Resources, and Emotion Regulation Need in Daily-Life Emotional Contexts.

OBJECTIVES: The Strengths and Vulnerabilities Integration model (Charles, 2010) suggests older adults experience difficulty regulating emotions with high-arousal negative stimuli due to decreases in resources. We investigate relationships among age, physical and cognitive resources, emotional experience, and perceived emotion regulation (ER) needs. METHODS: Participants aged 25-85 (N = 290) completed assessments of cognitive ability and physical health. In an experience sampling procedure (6x per day for 10 days), participants reported their momentary emotion experience and perceived need to regulate their emotions. RESULTS: Regardless of arousal level, negative emotion was associated with higher ER need and positive emotion was associated with lower ER need. This pro-hedonic orientation was stronger among older adults and individuals with more cognitive resources. In contrast to predictions, older adults in poor physical health who experience high levels of high-arousal negative emotion on average reported lower ER need compared with younger adults in poor physical health. However, older adults with lower cognitive resources who experience high levels of high-arousal negative emotion on average reported higher ER need. DISCUSSION: Findings suggest that younger age and lower levels of cognitive ability are linked to less perceived need to regulate negative emotional states. Physical vulnerabilities also may dampen the perceived need for regulating high-arousal negative emotions, but only among older adults. Age-related shifts in resources and emotional goals may influence the likelihood that individuals are motivated to engage in ER, as well as the effectiveness of those efforts.

Adult attachment and interpersonal emotion regulation motives in daily life.

Interpersonal goals and adult attachment have implications for how people interact with others as well as for emotion experience and regulation. Literature on intrapersonal emotional processes has typically not examined motivations underlying people's engagement with others' emotions and its connections to individual differences related to close relationships such as attachment. This study analyzed the relationships between interpersonal emotion regulation motives, perceived social interaction outcomes, and attachment. Undergraduates (N = 211) reported their trait attachment. Experience sampling was used to examine the reasons why they wanted to regulate others' emotions during daily interactions and perceived changes in their own well-being and relationship quality with the target of regulation. Attachment anxiety was associated with more self-focused prohedonic motives and impression management motives, while attachment avoidance predicted less perceived increases in emotional and relational well-being after interactions. People who tended to report more (self- and other-focused) prohedonic and less impression management motives in daily life perceived more positive changes in their emotional well-being and people who tended to report higher emotional similarity motives perceived more positive changes in their relational well-being after interactions People also perceived more positive emotional and relational interaction outcomes at times when they held more (self- and other-focused) prohedonic, impression management, or relationship maintenance motives and less self-focused performance and relationship distancing motives. Overall, these findings suggest that attachment anxiety may guide why people engage with other people's emotions and these extrinsic interpersonal emotion regulation motives may play a role in socioemotional outcomes of daily interactions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Satisfaction with life in Special Olympic athletes: the role of autonomy support and basic need fulfilment.

Aims: Athletes in the general population report higher satisfaction of basic needs when coaches are providing an autonomy supportive sport climate (ASSC). Our study aims at investigating whether ASSC is associated with satisfaction with life in athletes with intellectual disabilities (ID) and whether this association is mediated by basic need satisfaction. Method: During the Special Olympics World Winter Games 2017, 168 athletes with ID (M = 33.86 years; SD = 10.47) completed questionnaires measuring ASSC, basic need satisfaction (autonomy, competence, and relatedness), and satisfaction with life. Multiple linear regression analyses and mediation analyses were performed. The mediation model was controlled for the potential impact of participating in team vs. individual sports. Additionally, gender effects were explored. Results: ASSC was significantly associated with satisfaction with life (ß = .38, p < .001). This association was mediated by competence (indirect effect: ab1 = .15; CI [.05; .32]) but not by autonomy or relatedness. No effects were found related to participating in team vs. individual sports or gender. Conclusions: Our study provides evidence that an ASSC is associated with athletes perceiving themselves as more competent and reporting more satisfaction with life.

Supporting robust research on adult emotional development by considering context.

A criterion for high quality science is to produce findings that are robust and replicable across studies. A potential hinderance to successful replication however is context dependency. To formally address issues of context dependency, context has to be defined and integrated into research and replication practices. Emotion research and particularly research on adult emotional development have long emphasized the importance of context. Drawing on established theories of adult development and existing frameworks of context, we define context as it relates to emotional development in adulthood, highlighting specific aspects of immediate surroundings (familiarity, cognitive demands, and social aspects) as well as sociocultural and socioeconomic context, situated within ontogenetic development and historical time. In order to improve the robustness of research on adult emotional development, we encourage researchers to consider these contextual aspects in formulating and testing research questions as well as when interpreting failed replications. We discuss how to adapt study designs to facilitate more context sensitive adult emotional development research. Considering context not only enables new discoveries in aging research, but also can help clarify significant long-standing research questions and further enhance the robustness of research on adult development in emotion. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

"I feel you": Greater linkage between friends' physiological responses and emotional experience is associated with greater empathic accuracy.

How do people come to know others' feelings? One idea is that affective processes (e.g., physiological responses) play an important role, leading to the prediction that linkage between one's physiological responses and others' emotions relates to one's ability to know how others feel (i.e., empathic accuracy). Participants (N = 96, 48 female friend pairs) completed a stressful speech task and then provided continuous ratings of their own (as "targets") and their friend's (as "perceivers") emotional experience for the video-taped speeches. We measured physiology-physiology linkage (linkage between perceivers' and targets' physiology), physiology-experience linkage (linkage between perceivers' physiology and targets' experience), and empathic accuracy (linkage between perceivers' ratings of targets' experience and targets' ratings of their experience). Physiology-experience (but not physiology-physiology) linkage was associated with greater empathic accuracy even when controlling for key potential confounds (random linkage, targets' and perceivers' emotional reactivity, and relationship closeness). Results suggest that physiological responses play a role in empathic accuracy.