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Experiencing positive emotions is paramount to deriving vitality from daily lived experiences. Positive emotions are associated with a range of beneficial outcomes including longevity, reduced incidents of stroke, improved sleep quality, larger social networks, increased prosocial behavior, lower cortisol levels, and increased endogenous opioids and oxytocin. Despite these benefits, only limited research has focused on understanding positive emotion regulation within the context of depression. Rather, mechanisms related to the regulation of negative emotion have been the focus of research and evidence-based treatments. This interdisciplinary review paper aims to advance knowledge regarding the role of positive emotion regulation in individuals with depression in order to inform the development of transdiagnostic evidenced-based approaches to treatment that bolster the experience of positive life events. We draw on research findings across the fields of clinical psychology, affective science, and social psychology in order to identify future directions for novel interdisciplinary translational research regarding mechanisms associated with positive emotion regulation.

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Objective: Positive affectivity (PA; disposition to experience positive moods) and negative affectivity (NA; disposition to experience negative moods) may be risk factors for depression. Low PA may impair positive emotion regulation (savoring), potentially exacerbating depression. Understanding the mechanisms in which temporal domains of savoring influence the relationship between affectivity and depression may help advance depression treatments. Method: 1,618 participants (1,243 females; 70.0% Caucasian, 19.1% Asian, 4.5% African American, 0.9% Pacific Islander, 0.7% American Indian or Alaskan Native, 4.9% Biracial) ages 17 -40 (M = 18.99, SD = 1.33) completed questionnaires. An exploratory path analysis was run with PA and NA as exogenous variables, savoring domains as mediators, and depression the outcome. Results: PA and NA were associated with depression and all three savoring temporal domains. Momentary savoring distinctly mediated the relationship between both PA and NA and depression. Limitations: The data are self-report and cross-sectional, precluding causal inference. Post-hoc power analysis indicated that the present study was underpowered. The use of a college sample primarily comprised of Caucasian women limits generalizability. Conclusions: Affectivity was associated with the temporal domains of savoring and indirectly associated with depression via momentary savoring. All temporal domains of savoring may bolster PA and mitigate NA. Momentary savoring may reduce depression symptoms in individuals with low PA and high NA.

Cognitive control involves multifaceted top-down attentional functions that detect, monitor, and resolve conflict in order to facilitate goal-oriented behavior in daily life circumstances (Miller & Cohen, 2001). According to theories of cognitive development in bilinguals, cognitive control processes in bilinguals have adapted to meet the language demands of their transactional environment, leading to structural and functional differences in the brain (Green & Abutalebi, 2013;Grundy et al., 2017;Vinerte & Sabourin, 2019). When bilinguals speak in one language, there is activation of the representation of the object or concept in their other language, which can create interference in processing the message