The Relationship Between Daily Emotion Regulation Motives And Emotion Regulation Process

Emotion regulation refers to how individuals impact their emotional experience and expression.The emotion regulation ability is closely associated with psychological health.According to the extended process model of emotion regulation,emotion regulation could be divided into four stages: identification,selection,implementation and monitoring.Emotion regulation motives refer to the reasons of why individuals regulate their emotions.Fewer research have examined the association between emotion regulation motives and emotion regulation process,especially in identification and monitoring stage.The current research is aimed at exploring the relationship between emotion regulation motives(pro-hedonic motives,performance motives and social motives)and emotion regulation process systematically,through Experience Sampling Method(ESM).Participants were recruited from colleges in Wuhan,and totally 155 participants joined in the research(aged between 17-31,M = 20.07).Participants need to finish baseline assessments in laboratory first.Then the ESM lasted for 7 days,questionnaires were sent to participants’ mobile phone through a link for 5 times a day.Multilevel modeling was applied for data analyses.In study 1,the relationships between emotion regulation motives and identification,selection,implementation were examined.Results were as follow:(1)In identification stage,when participants experience negative events,negative affect(Odd ratio(OR)=1.37,95%CI = [1.05,1.80]),pro-anhedonia motives(OR = 1.57,95%CI = [1.28,1.93]),performance motives(OR = 1.22,95%CI = [1.10,1.35])positively predicted identification.When participants experience positive events,their positive affect negatively predicted identification(OR = 0.73,95%CI = [0.61,0.86]).(2)In selection stage,when participants experience negative events,pro-anhedonia motives were positively associated with frequency of reappraisal,distraction,rumination and avoidance,and social motives were positively associated with frequency of situation modification,social sharing.When participants experience positive events,performance motives were positively associated with acceptance and avoidance,but negatively associated with social sharing and rumination.(3)In implementation stage,when participants experience positive events,the use of social sharing and reappraisal positively predicted positive affect,and the moderation effect of emotion regulation motives was significant.In higher level of performance motives,the positive predictive effect of social sharing in positive affect was smaller.While in higher level of social motives,the positive predictive effect of reappraisal in positive affect was larger.Study 2 explored possible factors associated monitoring stage,and the moderation effect of emotion regulation motives.In monitoring stage,emotion regulation stopping,switching and emotion regulation flexibility were assessed.Results were as follow:(1)In emotion regulation stopping,when participants experience positive events,the positive prediction of perceived success was reported(OR = 4.65,95%CI = [1.11,19.56]).Besides,the association between depressive symptom and emotion regulation stopping was revealed(OR = 1.07,95%CI = [1.01,1.13]).(2)In emotion regulation switching,when participants experience negative events,the predictive effect of negative affect was significant(OR = 1.07,95%CI = [1.01,1.13]).While participants experience positive events,the predictive effect of perceived success was significant(OR = 0.29,95%CI =[0.10,0.82]).(3)In emotion regulation flexibility,within-strategy flexibility was positively associated with positive affect(β = 0.07,SE = 0.03,p = 0.008).When emotion regulation motives were added to the model,a significant moderation effect of social motives was reported.With higher social motives,the negative predictive effect of within-strategy flexibility on negative affect was smaller.The current research revealed daily emotion regulation process and associated factors,emphasized the important role of emotion regulation motives in the four stages of emotion regulation,and may provide empirical evidence to reveal the underlying mechanism and individual difference in emotion regulation.