Between‐Individual Differences in Baseline Well‐Being and Emotion Regulation Strategy Use Moderate the Effect of a Self‐Help Cognitive‐Behavioral Intervention for Typical Adults

Abstract

Background: Self-help interventions intended to help nonclinical individuals regulate their emotions can have important social benefits (i.e., mental disorder prevention, wellbeing promotion). However, their mean effect size on wellbeing is generally low, possibly because there are considerable betweenindividual differences in the response to these interventions. The present study examined whether individuals' baseline levels of emotional wellbeing and engagement in emotion regulation strategies moderate the effects on these same variables of a 4-week self-help cognitive-behavioral intervention intended for typical adults.Methods: Data were collected from 158 nonclinical French adults (n = 95 for the control group, n = 63 for the cognitive-behavioral group) using experience sampling. Emotional wellbeing was assessed, as well as the engagement in three emotion regulation strategies (i.e., cognitive reappraisal, problem solving, and appreciation).Results: As expected, the posttest scores on some variables were significantly predicted by the interactions between the intervention and the pretest scores on these same variables. In particular, it was the participants with the most negative baseline levels (i.e., low emotional wellbeing, low engagement in appreciation) who benefitted most from the intervention. Discussion: Results are discussed in the light of current knowledge on between-individual differences in how individuals respond to interventions.

How regulation strategies protected or worsened emotional experience during France's three lockdowns: Prepandemic versus pandemic comparisons and longitudinal approach

“…The prepandemic (control) sample ( Fig. 1 ) was drawn from previous studies ( Congard et al, 2019 ; Pavani et al, 2017 , Pavani et al, 2020 ), and comprised individuals who had been questioned about their affect and emotion regulation strategies in natural everyday situations.

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“…There has been little research on affective changes since the start of the pandemic, with a particular dearth in France. The present study focused on two different outcomes: changes in the French population's emotional experience across the three lockdowns, compared with prepandemic levels ( Congard et al, 2019 ; Congard, Boudoukha, et al, 2022 ; Congard, Le Vigouroux, et al, 2022 ; Pavani et al, 2017 ; Pavani et al, 2020 ); and the impact of emotion regulation strategy use across the three lockdowns, looking at the protective role of certain strategies and people's potential ability to adapt to the situation over time.…”

Influence of extraversion and neuroticism on the weekly dynamics of jobseekers' self-regulation

“…A number of previous studies had provided evidence supporting the factorial and criterion validity of the above-mentioned items for assessing emotional wellbeing (e.g., Le Vigouroux, Pavani, Dauvier, Kop, & Congard, 2017;Pavani et al, 2017Pavani et al, , 2019. On this basis, we computed an indicator of emotional wellbeing by averaging scores for the 10 items, after inverting scores for the negative emotion-related items (α = 0.89 at the within-individual level, and 0.95 at the betweenindividual level) 3 .…”

“…This pattern is illustrated in Figure 1a, showing predictions of jobsearch efforts as a function of emotional wellbeing that were computed on the basis of the parameters estimated by Model 3a. More specifically, predictions of this effect were computed separately for individuals displaying the four Galenic profiles (see Dauvier et al, 2019), namely individuals scoring low on both traits (i.e., stable introverts), high on both traits (i.e., neurotic extraverts), high on extraversion and low on neuroticism (i.e., stable extraverts), or high on neuroticism and low on extraversion (i.e., neurotic introverts).…”

Benefits of a Brief Physical Activity Programme on Employees’ Affective Well-being and Momentary Affective States: A Quasi-Experimental Study

“…To the best of our knowledge, only one intervention study relied on a four-week PA programme (Bretland & Thorsteinsson, 2015). Yet, short non-sporting interventions designed to improve affective well-being in employees such as positive psychology interventions (Rahm, Heise, & Schuldt, 2017), well-being games (Keeman, Näswall, Malinen, & Kuntz, 2017) or mindfulness (Pavani et al, 2020), show significant benefits from four weeks of practice. Considering the advantages employees and managers can reap from developing short efficient interventions, the promising results from Bretland and Thorsteinsson (2015) need to be replicated and extended with larger sample sizes.…”