Within-person associations between emotion regulation and negative affect in adolescents' daily life.

Abstract

Adolescence is marked by elevated levels of negative affect (NA) and is a crucial period for the development of emotion regulation (ER). To date, relatively little is known about how adolescents' daily use of different ER strategies (ERS) is associated with momentary affective experiences. To elucidate these dynamics, we investigated whether (a) within-person differences in using different ERS were related to momentary NA and positive affect, (b) ER variability (operationalized as between-strategy variability) was related to momentary affect, and (c) stressor intensity was a moderator herein. Data from two ecological momentary assessment studies were used: N_Study1 = 89 Dutch adolescents (48% females, data collected in 2019) and N_Study2 = 266 Belgian adolescents (42% females, data collected in 2021). Momentary affect and ERS use were measured eight times per day during 1 week (Study 1) or five times during 2 weeks (Study 2). Within-person associations were estimated using a series of univariate autoregressive (Lag-1) dynamic structural equation models. Results show that, of all the ERS examined, only distraction was associated with lower levels of momentary NA and higher levels of positive affect across both studies, whereas the opposite associations were found for rumination. Contrary to expectations, ER variability was associated with lower levels of momentary NA only when stressor intensity was low but with higher levels of NA when stressor intensity was high. Overall, findings have noteworthy implications for future research on affect dynamics in adolescents and reveal a more nuanced picture about the benefits of ER variability in daily life. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).