Successful emotion regulation (ER) is a central aspect of psychosocial functioning and mental health and is thought to improve and be refined in adolescence. Past research on ER has mainly focused on one-time measurements of habitual ER. Linking regulatory strategies to emotions in daily lives is key to understanding adolescents’ emotional lives. Using an Experience Sampling Method with 78 adolescents (Mage = 13.91, SDage = .95, 66% girls), we investigated the use, selection, and success in down-regulating negative emotions of eight ER strategies across 44 assessments. Acceptance was the strategy employed most often followed by problem-solving, rumination, distraction, avoidance, reappraisal, social support, and suppression. Interestingly, negativity of the event influenced the use of ER strategies: With low intensity negative emotions, acceptance was more likely to be used, and with high intensity negative emotions, suppression, problem-solving, distraction, avoidance, social support, and rumination were more likely to be used. With regard to success, multilevel models revealed that problem-solving, reappraisal, and acceptance were more successful in down-regulating negative emotions than rumination. Further, among girls, no relations between the momentary use of ER strategies and depressive symptoms was found. Among boys, a negative relation between acceptance and depressive symptoms emerged. Results from this study suggest that there is a reciprocal relationship between the intensity of negative emotions and ER strategies and that gender differences may exist. Taken together, this study showed which ER strategies are used by a healthy adolescent sample, and these results are discussed with regard to their theoretical and practical importance.

Emotion differentiation (ED) refers to the precision with which people can identify and distinguish their emotions and has been associated with well-being in adults. This study investigated ED and its relation with emotional well-being (i.e. depressive symptoms, positivity and negativity intensity and propensity, implicit theories of emotions) in adolescents. We used an experience sampling method with 72 participants (M = 14.00, 71% girls) to assess adolescents' positive and negative emotions at different time points over the course of two weekends and a baseline questionnaire to assess emotional well-being. Differentiating negative emotions was related to less negativity intensity and propensity, and to the belief that emotions are malleable. Differentiating positive emotions was not related to any of the assessed well-being variables. Together, these results suggest that a detailed awareness of one's negative emotional states is an important dimension of well-being, also in adolescence.

Past studies have shown that jealousy peaks in adolescence. However, little is known about how and when adolescents experience jealousy in their daily lives. The current study aimed to examine the relation between state jealousy, the more general propensity to feel jealous, the interpersonal contexts in which jealousy arises, and different forms of social comparison. The impact of jealousy on perceptions of well‐being was also explored. We used an experience sampling method during two weekends with 68 adolescents (Mage = 13.94; 64.70% girls). Jealousy was common: On average, 90% of our sample experienced jealousy in 20% of the assessments. Adolescents reported more jealousy with peers than with family. Additionally, they experienced more jealousy when in online contexts than when in face‐to‐face peer contexts. The normative nature of jealousy, its developmental function and relation with well‐being, and implications for understanding jealousy triggered in (highly social) online contexts are discussed.

Consistently, moderate to strong correlations between emotion regulation and depressive symptomology are well documented. This relationship is most often conceptualized as unidirectional, in that poor emotion regulation acts as a pre-existing risk factor for depressive symptomatology. However, explicit examinations of the direction of this relationship have been limited, and support for a directional relation between emotion regulation and psychopathology has been inconsistent. Moreover, the majority of the research exploring these associations relies on adult participants and the studies that have examined emotion regulation and depression in adolescents have relied almost exclusively on cross-sectional data. As a replication and extension of work that has been done by others, the current study assessed Suppression and Reappraisal use and Depressive Symptoms in 1343 adolescents (Mean age = 12.9 years, SD = 0.85) who completed assessments of emotion regulation and depressive symptoms four times over two years. Results indicated that only Suppression but not Reappraisal was concurrently correlated with Depressive Symptoms. Moreover, a correlated slopes analysis showed that within-subject changes in use of Suppression, but not Reappraisal, were associated with within-subject changes in Depressive Symptoms over time. Finally, a cross-lag panel analysis showed that while Depressive Symptoms were predictive of future Suppression use, Suppression use did not predict later Depressive Symptoms. Therefore, while Suppression and Depressive Symptoms seem to be associated during adolescence, associations between reappraisal and depressive symptomology were not present in the current study. Moreover, despite previous evidence supporting emotion regulation as a risk factor for depression, suppression may be the outcome, rather than the antecedent, of depressive symptoms during adolescence.

Higher affect variability, instability, and inertia in daily life are usually seen as indicators of emotional dysregulation. Research has shown that individuals with such affect dynamic patterns experience more depressive symptoms. However, similar affect dynamics might function differently across individuals. In this study, we propose that the impact of affect dynamics on depressive symptoms depends on how individuals feel on average (i.e., their affect levels). We analyzed data from seven studies that measured affect in daily life (N = 1,448, age range = 11.7-29.9 years, 64.8% females). Main and interaction effects of affect dynamics (variability, instability, inertia) and affect level on depressive symptoms were tested, separately for positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA). For PA, we found mostly main effects of PA dynamics and PA level on depressive symptoms, but no interactions, indicating that PA dynamics are associated with depressive symptoms independent of how individuals feel on average. For NA, significant interactions emerged for NA variability × NA level, NA instability × NA level, but not NA inertia × NA level. For individuals with low NA levels, high NA variability and NA instability were associated with more depressive symptoms. In contrast, for individuals with high NA levels, high NA variability (but not NA instability) was associated with reduced depressive symptoms. These results indicate that high affect variability may not always signal emotional dysregulation and even be beneficial for those with high NA levels. Overall, this underscores the need for a more nuanced understanding of affect variability in depressive symptoms.