Emotion Regulation Style and Daily Rumination: Potential Mediators between Affect and Both Depression and Anxiety during Adolescence

Abstract

Adolescence is a vulnerable period for depressive and anxious symptom development, and emotion regulation (ER) may be one mechanism linking temperament—i.e., positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA)—with such symptomatology. Rumination is a common ER strategy that is traditionally assessed using self-reported questionnaires, but it would also be interesting to examine it with an Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) approach. Sixty-five adolescents (Mage = 14.69; SDage = 0.82; range = 14–17 years old; 53.80% girls) completed self-report measures of temperament, ER style, depression and anxiety, and underwent an EMA to investigate rumination use. Results revealed that negative ER style and rumination use mediated the relationship between NA and depression, while only rumination use mediated the relationship between PA and depression. Moreover, NA contributed to increase anxiety, but negative ER style did not significantly mediate this relationship. Rumination use also had no effect on anxiety. This study provides further support for the relationship between temperament, ER, and internalizing problems. It seems that both a negative ER style and rumination use mediate the relationship between NA and depression whereas only NA had a significant direct effect on anxiety. Furthermore, PA buffered the effect of rumination use on depression in this study.

Social Undermining and Interpersonal Rumination among Employees: The Mediating Role of Being the Subject of Envy and the Moderating Role of Social Support

“…Rumination appears to have a negative influence on sentiment and sentiment-related cognition. Existing emotional states such as sadness, anger [ 38 ], anxiety [ 39 ], and despair can be exacerbated and prolonged by rumination [ 40 , 41 ]. Ruminative thinking can also cause individuals to elaborate upon and further polarize the thought content that they focus upon during rumination [ 17 ].…”

“…Negative occurrences, particularly those that, like undermining, breach behavioral norms, are the main triggers of ruminative thinking [ 48 ]. According to equity theory, when people are confronted with unfavorable conditions such as social undermining, they will engage in ruminative thinking [ 39 ]. Their assessment of their current state is not only based on the actual facts but will also involve repeatedly thinking about what things should or could be [ 48 ].…”

Psychometric Properties of the Chinese Version of the Brief State Rumination Inventory

“…Therefore, it is necessary to consider these factors when exploring rumination. Herein, scales such as the depression–anxiety–stress scale (DASS), emotion regulation questionnaire (ERQ), and positive and negative affect scale (PANAS) are used to detect (mal)adaptive effects could be suitable to help examine the criterion validity of rumination scales ( 34 ).…”

A Second-Order Adaptive Network Model for Exam-Related Anxiety Regulation

“…Maladaptive strategies include, for instance, suppression (the attempt to hide, inhibit or reduce ongoing emotion-expressive behavior [16,17] which happens once an emotion is already taking place [18]) and rumination (the repetitive thinking about the thoughts and feelings about the event [19]. Both processes give the individual the feeling that they are solving the process, but actually trigger more negative emotions [20]. On the other hand, adaptive strategies can include, for instance, putting an event into perspective: diminishing the meaning of the event [19] or reappraisal (the attempt to reinterpret an emotion-eliciting situation, altering its meaning and its emotional impact [17]).…”