Emotion experience and regulation in undergraduates following social rejection: A daily diary study

Abstract

We used a 30-day daily diary assessment method to examine the within-person associations between social rejection, emotional experiences, and emotion regulation strategies in a sample of 34 college students. Taking emotional experience as the dependent variable, we explored and analyzed cumulative and hysteresis effects using a random regression coefficient model. The results showed that situations of social rejection tended to induce negative emotional experiences, for which college students mostly adopted attention transfer strategies. In contrast, positive emotional experience increased in situations of social acceptance, and college students mostly adopted cognitive reappraisal strategies in this setting. Further, cognitive reappraisal strategies had time accumulation and overlapping effects on individual positive emotional experiences, and attention transfer strategies had a lag effect on individual emotional experiences. These findings advance understanding of the negative affect–emotion regulation association among individuals exposed to social rejection.