Flexible, Yet Firm: A Model of Healthy Emotion Regulation

Abstract

We propose a model of healthy intentional emotion regulation that includes (1) a large repertoire of (2) adaptive strategies that (3) one persists with despite initial negative feedback. One hundred forty-four undergraduates (average age = 19.20 years; 68% female, 79% Caucasian) completed a novel performance task indicating what they would think or do to feel better in response to eleven stressful vignettes. After their initial response, participants indicated four more times how they would respond if their previous strategy was not working. Raters categorized each response as an emotion regulation strategy and coded the adaptiveness of each strategy. Participants self-reported Neuroticism, Extraversion, Conscientiousness, Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) symptoms, and depressive symptoms. We regressed each personality dimension and psychopathology symptom on our model of healthy emotion regulation. Neuroticism was negatively associated with adaptiveness and persistence. Extraversion was positively associated with adaptiveness. Conscientiousness was positively associated with repertoire, adaptiveness, and persistence, while BPD symptoms were negatively associated with all three variables. Depressive symptoms were negatively associated with persistence. These preliminary findings suggest that people with larger repertoires of more adaptive emotion regulation strategies who persist with these strategies despite initial negative feedback report less personality pathology and psychological distress.

Components of Emotion Regulation Flexibility: Linking Latent Profiles to Depressive and Anxious Symptoms

“…Moreover, our measure of repertoire was limited in that it assessed only up-regulation and down-regulation of emotional expression, which prohibits the understanding of repertoire in ER flexibility. Although this was frequently examined in the flexibility literature (e.g., Bonanno et al, 2004; Burton & Bonanno, 2016; Westphal et al, 2010), other studies have conceptualized repertoire as the use of a wider range of strategies (e.g., Dixon-Gordon et al, 2015; Southward, Altenburger, Moss, Cregg, & Cheavens, 2018). This limitation also precluded us from examining whether individuals with high ability across flexibility components are overlapping or populated by individuals who use putatively adaptive strategies.…”

The Tension Between Cognitive and Regulatory Flexibility and Their Associations With Current and Lifetime PTSD Symptoms

“…However, such an examination is complicated since there are definitional overlaps, with different terms referring to the same construct of flexibility; for example, research on coping and emotion regulation uses coping flexibility, affective flexibility and emotion regulation flexibility to depict individuals’ ability to modulate subjective feeling and behaviors while utilizing emotion regulation strategies across stressful situations ( Bonanno et al, 2011 ; Cheng et al, 2014 ; Zhu and Bonanno, 2017 ; Southward et al, 2018 ). Furthermore, individuals’ ability to regulate their emotions in accordance with contextual demands is sometimes labeled expressive flexibility ( Bonanno et al, 2004 ) and sometimes cognitive flexibility ( Moore and Malinowski, 2009 ; Gabrys et al, 2018 ).…”

Emotion regulation goals: An individual difference perspective

“…People vary in their persistence to pursue their goals (Elliot & Fryer, ; Fishbach & Dhar, ), which can impact the extent to which they monitor their regulatory efforts (Bonanno & Burton, ; Carver & Scheier, ). For example, more conscientious individuals are more likely to persist when their regulatory efforts fail (Southward, Altenburger, Moss, Cregg, & Cheavens, ).…”

“…In addition, experimental designs will be useful for isolating antecedents and consequences of ER goals. For example, Southward et al () tested whether the Big Five personality traits predicts the range of ER strategies people want to use during a performance task.…”