Variability in emotion regulation strategy use is negatively associated with depressive symptoms

ABSTRACT

Variability in the emotion regulation (ER) strategies one uses throughout daily life has been suggested to reflect adaptive ER ability and to act as a protective factor in mental health. Moreover, psychological inflexibility and persistent negative affect (or affective inertia) are key features of depression and other forms of mental illness and are often further exacerbated by rigid or overly passive regulatory behaviours. The current study investigated the hypothesis that ER variability might serve as a protective factor against depressive symptoms and affective inertia. Using experience-sampling (N = 213), we tested whether two indictors of ER variability (between- and within-strategy SDs) were related to depressive symptoms and affective inertia. We found that people with higher between-strategy variability and within-strategy variability (specifically for reappraisal and distraction) reported fewer depressive symptoms. Both within- and between-strategy variability were negatively related to negative affective inertia. Between-strategy variability and negative affective inertia had unique effects on depression, when used as simultaneous predictors. Altogether, this study provides further evidence for the utility of ER as a factor buffering against depressive symptoms and particularly for the use of variable ER strategies.

KEYWORDS:

• Emotion regulation
• depression
• experience sampling
• affective inertia
• psychological flexibility

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Authorship contribution statement

Xiaoqin Wang: Conceptualization, Investigation, Data curation, Methodology, Formal analysis, Visualization, Writing original draft. Scott Blain: Extensive revision and editing of the written article, including substantive contributions to the framing of research questions and interpretation of findings. Jie meng: Conceptualization, Data curation, Methodology. Yuan Liu: Conceptualization, Writing – review & editing. Jiang Qiu: Conceptualization, Investigation, Resources, Project administration.

Data availability statement

Part of the data from this study are available online at the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/yuh8b/). The other data (ESM self-report measures) used in this article are available upon request. Those data are being used in an unfinished longitudinal study, and so will not be made publicly available until that project is finished.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number31771231; 31800950], the General Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China [32071070], Natural Science Foundation of Chongqing [grant number cstc2019jcyj-msxmX0520], Social Science Planning Project of Chongqing [grant number 2018PY80] and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [grant number SWU119007], Chang Jiang Scholars Program, National Outstanding Young People Plan, Chongqing Talent Program. SDB was supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (1348264).