Daily Stress Encounters: Positive Emotion Upregulation and Depressive Symptoms

Colombo, D., Baños, R. M., Desdentado, L., Kleiboer, A., Pavani, J.-B., Wrzesien, M., & Bretón López, J. M. (2024). Daily stress encounters: Positive emotion upregulation and depressive symptoms. Emotion, 24(6), 1403–1416. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0001362

Rationale

Previous research has emphasized the importance of positive emotions in coping with stress (Folkman, 2008; van Steenbergen et al., 2021).

Laboratory studies have shown that strategies to upregulate positive emotions, such as mindfulness, positive reappraisal, and expressing positive emotions, can counteract the negative effects of stress (Basso et al., 2019; Folkman & Moskowitz, 2000; Kraft & Pressman, 2012).

However, most studies have relied on laboratory-based or retrospective designs, which may not accurately reflect real-life emotion regulation processes (Colombo, Fernández-Álvarez, et al., 2020; Heininga & Kuppens, 2021).

Additionally, individuals with depression often show an impaired ability to regulate positive emotions (Vanderlind et al., 2020), which may affect their stress-coping mechanisms.

The next step in advancing our understanding is to examine the reciprocal influence between perceived stress and positive emotion upregulation in daily life, as well as how depressive symptoms might moderate these associations.

Method

The study employed an Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) design to monitor participants’ stress levels and daily use of positive upregulating strategies over two weeks.

Participants received three daily semi-randomized email-based surveys for two weeks.

They were asked to rate their momentary mood, perceived stress, and use of positive upregulating strategies (attentional deployment, cognitive change, and response modulation) at each assessment point.

Sample

The final sample included 92 undergraduate students (82.61% female), with a mean age of 21.36 (SD = 3.5).

Based on PHQ-9 scores, 39 participants had no significant depressive symptoms, 38 had mild depressive symptoms, and 15 had moderate to moderately severe depressive symptoms.

Measures

• Depression: Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9)
• Momentary Mood: Single-item measures for positive and negative mood (0-100 scale)
• Perceived Stress: Single-item measure (0-100 scale)
• Positive Upregulating Strategies: Single-item measures for attentional deployment, cognitive change, and response modulation (0-100 scale)

Statistical measures

Linear mixed-effects models were used to analyze the data, accounting for the hierarchical nature of the repeated measures.

Person-mean centering was applied to within-individual variables, and lagged data analysis was used to explore relationships between consecutive assessments.

Results

Hypothesis 1: Increased use of upregulating strategies will predict higher subsequent positive mood and lower subsequent negative mood.

Result: Confirmed. All strategies predicted higher positive mood and lower negative mood at the subsequent assessment.

Hypothesis 2: Higher levels of stress will predict increased subsequent use of positive upregulating strategies.

Result: Confirmed. Higher stress levels predicted increased use of all three strategies at the next assessment.

Hypothesis 3: Increased use of positive upregulating strategies will predict lower subsequent stress levels.

Result: Confirmed. Increased use of all strategies predicted lower stress levels at the next assessment.

Hypothesis 4: Depressive symptoms will moderate the reciprocal association between momentary stress and positive emotion upregulation.

Result: Partially confirmed. Depressive symptoms moderated the association between stress and subsequent use of cognitive change and response modulation strategies, but not attentional deployment.

The effectiveness of attentional deployment in reducing stress was lower for those with higher depressive symptoms, while cognitive change showed higher effectiveness.

Insight

This study provides valuable insights into how people regulate their emotions in response to stress in daily life.

The findings suggest that experiencing stress tends to motivate individuals to use strategies that boost positive emotions, which in turn helps reduce stress levels.

This creates a potentially adaptive cycle for managing stress through positive emotion regulation.

However, this adaptive process appears to be disrupted in individuals with higher levels of depressive symptoms.

When experiencing stress, these individuals are less likely to engage in strategies to increase positive emotions, particularly cognitive change and response modulation strategies.

This could potentially explain why people with depression often struggle more with stress management.

Interestingly, while the attentional deployment strategy (focusing on the present moment and positive feelings) was less effective for those with higher depressive symptoms, the cognitive change strategy (infusing positive meaning into events) was actually more effective.

This suggests that different strategies may be more or less beneficial depending on an individual’s mental health status.

These findings extend previous research by demonstrating the dynamic interplay between stress and positive emotion regulation in real-life settings, rather than just in laboratory conditions.

They also highlight the importance of considering individual differences, such as depressive symptoms, in understanding emotion regulation processes.

Future research could explore why certain strategies are more or less effective for individuals with depressive symptoms.

It could also investigate how to tailor stress management interventions based on an individual’s depressive symptom level, potentially improving the effectiveness of such interventions.

Strengths

The study had many methodological strengths including:

• Use of ecological momentary assessment to capture real-time, real-life experiences
• Examination of both the antecedents and consequences of positive emotion regulation strategies
• Investigation of the moderating role of depressive symptoms
• Use of advanced statistical methods (linear mixed-effects models) to account for the hierarchical nature of the data

Limitations

The study has several limitations:

• The sample size was relatively small and consisted mainly of young, female undergraduate students, limiting generalizability.
• The focus was on mild to moderate depressive symptoms, not clinical depression.
• Single-item measures were used for some constructs, which may not capture the full complexity of the phenomena.
• The study design does not allow for causal inferences.
• The two-week duration may not capture longer-term patterns or changes in emotion regulation.

These limitations imply that the findings should be interpreted cautiously and may not apply to all populations or clinical settings.

Further research with larger, more diverse samples and more comprehensive measures is needed to confirm and extend these findings.

Clinical Implications

The results have significant implications for understanding stress management and emotion regulation in daily life.

They suggest that encouraging the use of positive upregulating strategies could be an effective approach to managing stress.

This could inform the development of stress management interventions that focus on enhancing positive emotions rather than just reducing negative ones.

The findings also highlight the importance of considering individual differences, particularly depressive symptoms, in emotion regulation processes.

This suggests that a one-size-fits-all approach to stress management may not be optimal. Instead, interventions might need to be tailored based on an individual’s depressive symptom level.

For clinical psychology practice, these results suggest that helping individuals with depressive symptoms to more effectively implement positive emotion regulation strategies, particularly in response to stress, could be a valuable treatment target.

The finding that cognitive change strategies were particularly effective for those with higher depressive symptoms could inform specific intervention approaches.

However, the effectiveness of these strategies may be influenced by various factors, including the severity of depressive symptoms, the specific nature of the stressor, and individual preferences for emotion regulation strategies.

Therefore, a personalized approach that takes these factors into account may be most effective.

References

Primary reference

Colombo, D., Baños, R. M., Desdentado, L., Kleiboer, A., Pavani, J.-B., Wrzesien, M., & Bretón López, J. M. (2024). Daily stress encounters: Positive emotion upregulation and depressive symptoms. Emotion, 24(6), 1403–1416. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0001362

Other references

Basso, J. C., McHale, A., Ende, V., Oberlin, D. J., & Suzuki, W. A. (2019). Brief, daily meditation enhances attention, memory, mood, and emotional regulation in non-experienced meditators. Behavioural Brain Research, 356, 208–220.

Colombo, D., Fernández-Álvarez, J., Suso-Ribera, C., Cipresso, P., García-Palacios, A., Riva, G., & Botella, C. (2020). Biased affective forecasting: A potential mechanism that enhances resilience and well-being. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 1333.

Folkman, S. (2008). The case for positive emotions in the stress process. Anxiety, Stress, and Coping, 21(1), 3–14.

Folkman, S., & Moskowitz, J. T. (2000). Positive affect and the other side of coping. American Psychologist, 55(6), 647–654.

Heininga, V. E., & Kuppens, P. (2021). Psychopathology and positive emotions in daily life. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 39, 10–18.

Kraft, T. L., & Pressman, S. D. (2012). Grin and bear it: The influence of manipulated facial expression on the stress response. Psychological Science, 23(11), 1372–1378.

van Steenbergen, H., de Bruijn, E. R., van Duijvenvoorde, A. C., & van Harmelen, A. L. (2021). How positive affect buffers stress responses. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 39, 153–160.

Vanderlind, W. M., Millgram, Y., Baskin-Sommers, A. R., Clark, M. S., & Joormann, J. (2020). Understanding positive emotion deficits in depression: From emotion preferences to emotion regulation. Clinical Psychology Review, 76, 101826.

Keep Learning

Socratic questions for a college class to discuss this paper:

1. How might the findings of this study inform the development of more effective stress management interventions?
2. What are the potential implications of the differential effectiveness of strategies for individuals with varying levels of depressive symptoms?
3. How might the real-world, ecological nature of this study provide insights that laboratory-based studies might miss?
4. What ethical considerations should be taken into account when conducting ecological momentary assessment studies?
5. How might the findings of this study relate to broader theories of resilience and well-being?
6. What are the potential long-term implications of the disrupted stress-regulation cycle observed in individuals with higher depressive symptoms?