Emotion regulation flexibility and psychosis: A longitudinal study disentangling components of flexibility in psychosis-proneness

Objectives

Flexibility in self-regulation has emerged as an important component of mental health. Previous findings found that deficits in two components of regulatory flexibility were linked cross-sectionally to psychosis-proneness. We aimed to replicate and extend these findings longitudinally.

Methods

We measured psychosis-proneness and components of emotion regulation flexibility (i.e. context sensitivity, repertoire and feedback) at two time points with three months in between.

Results

Two flexibility components predicted psychotic-like experiences. The ability to detect the absence of contextual cues was implicated in both positive and negative dimensions but through opposite pathways. Expressive suppression ability—a subcomponent of repertoire-predicted positive symptoms. None of the flexibility components predicted distress related to the symptoms.

Conclusions

The current study provides further evidence on the implication of emotion regulation flexibility in the longer-term maintenance of psychotic-like experiences. Future studies can advance this work further by evaluating possible bidirectional relationships between psychotic-like experiences and deficits in emotion regulation flexibility.