Does Context Matter? Daily Diary Study Exploring the Effects of Stressor Intensity and Perceived Controllability on the Relationship Between Emotion Regulation and Affect in Adolescents

Abstract

Theoretical accounts emphasize the importance of context sensitivity in emotion regulation, yet research often neglects this. This study explored how adolescents’ use of three emotion regulation strategies—cognitive reappraisal, distraction, and rumination—interacted with stressor intensity and perceived controllability to influence daily emotions. A total of 249 adolescents participated in a daily diary study (M_age = 12.73, SD_age = 0.78; 63.1% males). Adolescents reported their daily use of emotion regulation strategies, emotional states, and contextual factors. In high-intensity stress situations, reappraisal and distraction each showed associations with reductions in negative affect, whereas rumination was related to increases in negative affect. In low-intensity stress contexts, reappraisal was associated with decreases in positive affect, and no significant effects emerged for distraction or rumination. For perceived controllability, no impact on negative affect was found; however, positive affect increased in uncontrollable situations when levels of reappraisal and rumination were low. Overall, the findings underscore the importance of stressor intensity and perceived controllability, suggesting that distraction’s effectiveness is less context-dependent than reappraisal and rumination. The current study hypotheses and data analytic plan were preregistered on The Open Science Framework at https://osf.io/dfhqx/.