Not just emotion regulation, but cognition: An experience sampling study testing the relations of ecological interpretation biases and use of emotion regulation strategies with momentary affective states during daily life functioning

Background

Current research is moving from studying cognitive biases and maladaptive emotion regulation (ER) as relatively stable phenomena contributing to affective disturbances, adopting ecological methodologies, such as Experience Sampling Methods (ESM). However, there is still limited ESM evidence on the interactions between stress and ER strategies’ use, and negative interpretation biases, regarding their relations with momentary affective states. In this study, we used a new ESM design to disentangle the contextual, regulatory and cognitive processes implicated in daily affective experiences.

Method

A sample of 103 participants completed an ESM study (3 times a day for 10 days) that included self-reports of momentary affect, stress intensity, ER strategies’ use and a cognitive task measuring momentary negative interpretation biases.

Results

Multilevel analyses supported significant interactions of both rumination and worry with stress intensity, to account for momentary higher negative and lower positive affect levels. Furthermore, higher state negative interpretation bias levels uniquely predicted both higher negative and lower positive momentary affect levels.

Conclusion

This study implemented a novel online cognitive task within an ESM procedure, which helped to disentangle how contextual ER strategies’ use and momentary cognitive biases uniquely relate to affective experiences in daily life.