Naming before Taming? Emotion Differentiation and Emotion Regulation Variability Hinder Each Other within Adolescents.

Abstract

To adapt to changing situations in daily lives, adolescents vary the intensity of strategies or switch between strategies to regulate their emotions. This emotion regulation variability is thought to be enhanced by emotion differentiation, which refers to how well adolescents distinctively label their emotions. We tested this assumption in five experience sampling method datasets, which repeatedly assessed emotion differentiation and emotion regulation variability in 750 adolescents’ daily life (aged 11 to 25, 59.17% female, 25834 observations). Unexpectedly, moments of higher emotion differentiation were followed by more consistent use of emotion regulation strategies (i.e., lower emotion regulation variability). Reciprocally, moments with high emotion regulation variability were followed by less emotion differentiation. These negative bidirectional temporal influences were present regardless of the types of variability (intensity or switching) and emotions (positive or negative). Our results prompt the need of further studying the benefits and interplay between emotion differentiation and regulation variability.