FACTORS ASSOCIATED WITH EMOTION REGULATION FLEXIBILITY

Flexibly switching among emotion regulation strategies has been associated with healthy functioning. In studies with non-clinical samples, people have been shown to flexibly choose between regulatory strategies when presented with negative stimuli of varying intensity levels. The present study used the emotion regulation choice task to investigate whether participant characteristics (depressive symptoms and difficulties in emotion regulation) were associated with differences in choice patterns and flexibility between two emotion regulation strategies. In order to compare groups, this study measured participants' sensitivity to negative stimuli by adding an image rating task before the choice procedure. Additionally, given the hierarchical structure of the data, this study utilized multi-level modeling analyses, which were more appropriate than analyses used in previous emotion regulation choice studies. The results show that participants with low and high levels of depressive symptoms have similar emotion regulation choice patterns and showed similar flexibility between strategies. On the other hand, particular difficulties in emotion regulation were associated with blunted emotion regulation flexibility. These findings suggest that particular difficulties in emotion regulation might better predict blunted emotion regulation flexibility between strategies than depressive symptoms. Finally, suggestions for future research in emotion regulation flexibility are provided.M.S. in Psychology, July 201