Peter Koval

A common maxim holds that “context is everything.” This perspective transformed the field of emotion regulation, which evolved from understanding which regulation strategies people use, to understanding how strategy use varies by context (i.e., strategy–situation fit). Theoretical accounts suggest contextual features are crucial in guiding strategy use. However, empirical evidence is isolated in piecemeal studies with inconclusive results. To comprehensively explore context-dependent emotion regulation, we need data on emotion regulation across many contexts, at scale. Combining up to 11 experience-sampling data sets collected from Belgian and Australian samples in an integrative analysis ( N _ID = 500–1,696, N _observations = 27,023–101,114, M _age = 25.38 years, 71% women), we examined how regulation-strategy use varies as a function of three theory-derived contextual features— intensity , controllability , and social features (i.e., the presence and closeness of others). We found limited support that context matters for daily emotion-regulation strategy use. Our study provides a well-powered foundational step to test a theory central to emotion-regulation research and highlights the complexity of capturing strategy–situation fit in daily life.

A primary objective of intensive longitudinal studies is to investigate within-person dynamics. In this context, item heterogeneity plays a critical role, as within-person processes may vary across items within a scale. A common example is the assessment of momentary affect using adjective lists (e.g., sad, angry, anxious, stressed), where each item captures different facets of positive or negative affect, providing unique and non-interchangeable information. However, standard practices often overlook item heterogeneity by aggregating item scores or assuming a single within-person factor in dynamic structural equation models. This simplification does not permit a fine-grained analysis of within-person dynamics and compromises cross-study comparability when item pools differ across studies. In this article, we reanalyze five large-scale intensive longitudinal datasets assessing momentary affect to illustrate how item heterogeneity can be explicitly modeled. We introduce a flexible modeling approach that accommodates item-specific and person-specific dynamics while improving psychometric comparability across studies, based on residual dynamic structural equation modeling with reference items. We compare this method to conventional modeling strategies and provide practical guidance for addressing item heterogeneity in the analysis of intensive longitudinal data.

Public debate around whether social media is detrimental to well-being often (implicitly) assumes a unidirectional effect of social media use on emotions. Specifically, social media use is assumed to reduces people’s well-being by making them feel more negative and/or less positive emotions. Equally likely, yet overlooked, possibilities are that people’s emotional states influence their social media use, or that social media use and emotions are reciprocally related. Empirical studies have begun to investigate reciprocal relationships between social media and emotions. But these studies largely rely on (retrospective) self-reported estimates of social media use, which are inaccurate. In the current study, we will combine objective, real-time Instagram use data with data on synchronous emotional experience to investigate whether, and how, Instagram use and emotions are reciprocally related. We will test whether such relationships differ by use type (e.g., content consumption vs. creation) or are moderated by individual differences (e.g., depression symptoms). To investigate how short-term effects accumulate over time, we will examine medium-term (2-week, 4-week) relationships between social media use and emotions. We will focus on Australian young adults, because this age group is one considered most “at risk” of experiencing detrimental effects of social media use (Spies Shapiro and Margolin, 2014). This research will shed light on the links between social media and everyday emotional experience—a key building block of mental health.

Music listening can serve an affect-regulatory function. For instance, someone who feels anxious may listen to music with the goal of evoking a different, desired feeling (e.g., calmness), labelled ‘compensatory’ listening. However, music therapists recommend starting with music matching one’s current feelings before gradually shifting to music that evokes desired feelings, following the ‘iso principle’. Some evidence supports the effectiveness of the iso principle for affect regulation in clinical populations. However, randomised experiments comparing the iso principle with other music-listening interventions are rare, especially with non-clinical participants. To address this gap, the current study compared the effectiveness of iso-principle, compensatory-principle, and unguided music listening for modulating anxiety among healthy participants ( N = 193) in a randomised experiment. Participants completed an anxiety induction before listening to a Spotify playlist in one of three randomly assigned conditions: participants in the iso and compensatory conditions listened to five-song iso- and compensatory-principle playlists respectively, curated by the researchers using participants’ self-selected songs, whereas participants in the unguided condition self-ordered their songs. Participants rated their momentary affect at baseline, post-anxiety-induction, and post-listening. Our pre-registered analyses revealed no significant difference in the affect-regulatory consequences of iso versus compensatory listening. However, post-hoc exploratory analyses revealed that participants in the guided (iso, compensatory) conditions reported significantly greater increases in calmness than unguided participants. Moreover, exploratory analyses of unguided listening sequences revealed seven distinct patterns of spontaneous music listening, which differed in perceived effectiveness. Findings from this study may inform the development of (digital) music interventions to improve well-being.

Emotions do not simply turn on and off again in an instant; rather, emotions rise and fall gradually, often persisting for a considerable period. Although it is normative for emotions to show a degree of momentum-a phenomenon known as emotional inertia-the tendency for emotions to be overly persistent has been associated with psychological maladjustment. However, the mechanisms underlying emotional inertia remain unclear. We aimed to fill this gap in the present study by investigating how the persistence of affect over time (emotional inertia) is mediated-at the within-person level-by the use of emotion-regulation strategies in daily life. We ran secondary analyses on eight experience sampling data sets collected between 2009 and 2021 (total N = 948 participants measured at 73,472 occasions), in which participants reported their momentary experiences of positive affect and negative affect and their recent use of four emotion-regulation strategies (distraction, cognitive reappraisal, rumination, and expressive suppression). We used dynamic structural equation modeling to estimate indirect effects of each strategy on the inertia of positive affect and negative affect. All four strategies reliably mediated both negative affect inertia and (to a lesser extent) positive affect inertia, supporting the notion that the use of emotion-regulation strategies represents a mechanism underpinning emotional inertia, at least among highly educated, nonclinical, Australian and Belgian young adults. However, each regulation strategy reduced the total autoregressive slope of affect at t-1 predicting affect at t by no more than 13%, suggesting factors other than emotion-regulation strategies also play important roles in emotional inertia. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Affective, behavioral, and cognitive (i.e., personality) states fluctuate across situations and context, yet the biological mechanisms regulating them remain unclear. Here, we report two large, longitudinal studies that investigate patterns of change in personality states and affect as a function of the menstrual cycle, ovarian hormones, and hormonal contraceptive use. Study 1 (N = 757) is an online diary study with a worldwide sample, whereas Study 2 (N = 257) is a laboratory study including repeated hormone assays. Both studies came to somewhat diverging conclusions. In Study 1, we found that dynamics of daily affect and personality were very similar among naturally cycling women and hormonal contraceptive users, with two exceptions: Hormonal contraceptive users showed greater variability in negative affect than naturally cycling women, and, naturally cycling women showed a descriptive, but nonsignificant decrease in positive affect in the premenstrual phase. Results of Study 2 indicated robust premenstrual increases in neuroticism and negative affect but decreases in extraversion and positive affect. High extraversion and low neuroticism were positively related to conception risk and the estradiol-to-progesterone ratio, suggesting potentially adaptive effects consistent with a fertility-induced shift in motivational priorities. We discuss how differences in methods likely account for differences in results between both studies and suggest methodological and theoretical guidelines for future research. Taken together, our results suggest that hormonal variation across the menstrual cycle-and discrete menstrual cycle events, such as premenstruation-represent potential biological sources of personality state variation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).

Rumination and negative affect are mutually reinforcing experiences. Their dynamic relation can confer vulnerability to psychopathology. Cultivating mindfulness has been proposed to buffer against such downward spirals of negativity. However, it remains unclear whether practicing mindfulness in daily life causally impacts rumination, negative affect, and their dynamics. We investigated this using a micro-randomized intensive longitudinal trial. Participants (N = 91) were prompted eight times per day for 10 days using a smartphone app. At each prompt, participants were randomized to complete a brief mindfulness intervention or an active-control task and then reported levels of rumination and negative affect. Results of dynamic structural equation models showed that the mindfulness intervention led to lower levels of rumination and negative affect but that it had no reliable impact on their dynamics. Thus, cultivating mindfulness in daily life may be a promising approach for decreasing rumination and negative affect but not their dynamical relation.