Emotion regulation and depressive symptoms: Close relationships as social context and influence.

Abstract

Depression is associated with social dysfunction and maladaptive social environments, but mechanisms through which social relationships affect depressive psychopathology are unclear. We hypothesized that emotion regulation (ER) is such a mechanism, with outcomes of individuals’ ER efforts sensitive to the social context, and individuals’ ER strategy repertoire and use sensitive to social influence. In Study 1, a longitudinal study of community adults (N = 1,319), associations of individuals’ ER strategies with depressive symptoms depended on social connectedness and romantic relationship status (social context hypothesis). Moreover, associations of social connectedness and relationship status with symptoms were accounted for by maladaptive ER concurrently and, for social connectedness, prospectively over 1 year (social influence hypothesis). Study 2a, using a national sample (N = 772), replicated and extended these findings with a broader array of ER strategies, and ruled out alternative explanations regarding social skills and psychological wellbeing. Among participants in romantic relationships (Study 2b; N = 558), intimacy and trust buffered associations of maladaptive ER strategies with symptoms (context), and maladaptive and adaptive ER mediated links between relationship variables and symptoms (influence). Findings suggest that close relationships—and variation in underlying relational processes within relationships— influence the ER strategies people use, and also affect whether individuals’ own ER repertoires contribute to depression when deployed. Results elucidate core social mechanisms of ER in terms of both basic processes and depressive psychopathology, suggest ER is a channel through which social factors affect internal functioning and mental health, and inform relationship pathways for clinical intervention.

Implicit loneliness, emotion regulation, and depressive symptoms in breast cancer survivors

“…Notably, effects of these emotional approach components depend in part on intrapersonal factors (e.g., gender; Juth, Dickerson, Zoccola, & Lam, 2015) and environmental contexts (e.g., social contexts receptive to emotional expression and processing; Stanton, Danoff-Burg et al, 2000), indicating that emotion regulation in coping with cancer does not occur in a vacuum. The notion that social factors may play a determining role is consistent with findings that individuals’ emotion regulation strategy use has different links with depressive symptoms depending on social connectedness versus loneliness (Marroquín & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2015). Understanding socially-relevant factors that moderate effects of emotional expression and processing among women with breast cancer may have important implications for treatment, as it may help identify women at higher risk for maladaptive coping outcomes, or suggest social targets in individually-focused treatment.…”

“…Only among women higher in implicit loneliness, expressing less positive emotion and engaging in more causal processing during the essay task predicted higher depressive symptoms. The fact that these patterns were not apparent among less lonely women supports the hypothesis that intrapersonal emotion regulatory processes have stronger effects on depression and other mental health outcomes among more socially isolated individuals (Marroquín, 2011; Marroquín & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2015). The present findings are also consistent with evidence implicating dampened positive emotion (e.g., Bylsma et al, 2008) and elevated causal processing (e.g., rumination; Nolen-Hoeksema et al, 2008) in depression.…”

“…Loneliness has cognitive and affective correlates (e.g., negative attentional bias; executive dysfunction; Cacioppo & Hawkley, 2009) which are implicated in depression, suggesting that loneliness affects the regulatory processes involved in the psychopathology of depression (Marroquín, 2011). Not only do lonelier individuals use more maladaptive and fewer adaptive emotion regulation strategies than individuals who perceive themselves as socially connected, their maladaptive strategies are also more strongly linked with depression (Marroquín & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2015), suggesting that lower perceptions of available social relationships determine effects of regulatory efforts.…”

“…That is, we sought to understand whether individuals’ emotional approach coping with their cancer experience would be associated with depressive symptoms differently depending on loneliness. We hypothesized that emotional expression and processing would be more strongly linked with symptoms when women were higher in loneliness, as are other emotion regulation strategies (Marroquín & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2015). As such, we sought to apply recent findings in the general population to address open questions of how social and emotional factors interact in cancer survivorship specifically.…”

Altered Positive Affect in Clinically Anxious Youth: the Role of Social Context and Anxiety Subtype

“…Thus, degree of emotional closeness may be an important social contextual factor for the experience of positive emotions in social settings, particularly for youth with social anxiety disorder. Some work has demonstrated that emotional closeness serves as a social form of regulation, helping to ease stress and physiological arousal (Marroquin & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2015). Therefore, presence of a close peer (either in one-on-one interactions or as a buffer for large peer group interactions) may help socially anxious youth to relax and enjoy positive experiences more so than the presence of less connected peers.…”