Time to reappraise or distract? Temporal and situational context in emotion regulation in daily life

Contextual factors influence how people regulate their everyday emotions. While daily life is rich with situations that evoke emotion regulation, few studies have broadly investigated the role of context in regulating emotions in response to naturally occurring negative events. In this study, we use a structured diary technique - the Experience Sampling Method - to test how different types of contextual factors are associated with using reappraisal and distraction to regulate daily emotions in N = 74 young adults from the general population. The following contextual factors were assessed: time of the day, weekday, tiredness, event stressfulness, and event type. We found that higher stressfulness of negative events was associated with using more distraction within- and between-person and using more reappraisal between persons. Time of day and weekday were not associated with reappraisal or distraction use, suggesting that variation in people’s external environments due to temporal patterns does not influence reappraisal or distraction use. However, tiredness was positively associated with distraction and reappraisal use within persons. Exploratory analyses suggested that experiencing time pressure affords less distraction use, and that experiencing physical discomfort affords less reappraisal use. These findings underscore the dynamic nature of emotion regulation, and the importance of context in everyday emotion regulation

Be(com)ing Social: Daily-Life Social Interactions and Parental Bonding

Parents are known to provide a lasting basis for their children's social development. Understanding parent-driven socialization is particularly relevant in adolescence, as an increasing social independence is developed. However, the relationship between key parenting styles of care and control and the microlevel expression of daily-life social interactions has been insufficiently studied. Adolescent and young adult twins and their nontwin siblings (N = 635; mean age = 16.6; age range = 14.2-21.9; 58.6% female; 79.5% in or having completed higher secondary/tertiary education; 2.8% speaking language other than Dutch at home) completed the Parental Bonding Instrument (PBI) on parental care and control. Participants also completed a 6-day experience sampling period (10 daily beeps, mean compliance = 68.0%) to assess daily-life social interactions. Higher overall parental bonding quality (of both parents) related to more positive social experiences in daily life (e.g., belonging in company), but not to more social behaviors (e.g., being with others). Factor analysis indicated a three-factor structure of the PBI, with care, denial of psychological autonomy, and encouragement of behavioral freedom. Paternal care was uniquely predictive of better social experiences. These findings demonstrate how parenting styles may be uniquely associated with how adolescents experience their social world, with a potentially important role for fathers in particular. This complements the long-held idea of socialization through parenting by bringing it into the context of daily life and implies how both conceptualizations of social functioning and interventions aimed at alleviating social dysfunction might benefit from a stronger consideration of day-to-day social experiences

Coping and sleep quality in youth: An Experience Sampling study

IntroductionSleep quality is closely linked with mental health. Two factors that influence sleep are coping style and locus of control, yet these have not been investigated in daily life. In this study, we examined associations between coping styles and sleep quality in daily life and the potential mediating effect of daily locus of control in a sample of youth, a group particularly vulnerable to developing psychopathology. MethodsThree hundred and seventy-nine youths from the TwinssCan study participated in an Experience Sampling study, assessing sleep quality as well as state locus of control over the most negative event from the previous day. Participants also completed the Utrecht Coping List, which assessed engagement, disengagement, and emotion-focused coping. ResultsDisengagement, "passive reaction," and emotion-focused coping were associated with lower daily sleep quality. State locus of control did not mediate any effects of coping styles on quality of sleep. ConclusionsDisengagement, "passive reaction," and emotion-focused coping were associated with decreased sleep quality during several consecutive days, which may put youths at risk for developing future insomnia, and strain their mental well-being over time. Thus, there may be value in asking about coping when a young individual presents with sleep problems; however, impaired coping when sleeping poorly should also be considered