From Stress to Strength: Temporal Links Between Emotion Regulation, Perceived Control, and Positive Affect

Abstract

Emotion regulation (ER) strategies are often implemented to reduce negative affect and boost positive affect. While research has focused on the relation between negative affect and less effective ER strategy use, more work is needed to investigate how ER strategies modulate positive affect and bolster individuals’ sense of agency. This EMA study examined the temporal effect of savoring on positive affect through increasing perceived controllability of daily stressors. Over a 14-day period, participants (n = 110) reported the most emotional event of the day, its level of perceived controllability, their use of 11 ER strategies (e.g., distraction, rumination), and their positive and negative affect. The use of savoring (i.e., reflect on or intensify positive experiences) emerged as both significantly relating to better affective outcomes, and, in a time-lagged mixed effects model, predicting both higher levels of self-perceived controllability and increased positive affect the day after.