Depressive symptoms and emotion regulation processes: Strategy selection and effectiveness

Depressive symptoms are typically associated with less successful emotion regulation (ER) in daily life but not when instructed to use specific ER strategies in controlled settings. Less is known about how depressive symptoms are associated with ER in standardized contexts when regulators can select their own strategy. Such contexts may be associated with less impairment in ER, as they control for qualitative differences in everyday life. The present study examines depressive symptoms, ER strategy use, and ER success in an age-diverse community sample (N = 124; age 25-83; data collected in 2018). Participants viewed emotional clips under prohedonic ER instructions (i.e., feel more positive and less negative) with no strategy provided. They rated their emotions and use of six ER strategies (savoring, distraction, positive reappraisal, detached reappraisal, bodily awareness, expressive suppression) after each clip. Depressive symptoms were only associated with lower use of savoring and bodily awareness and not associated with ER success (indexed by emotion experience). Use of bodily awareness predicted lower ER success among those higher in depressive symptoms, but no other effects of strategy use varied by depressive symptoms. Generally, use of savoring and positive reappraisal was associated with higher ER success, whereas distraction, detached reappraisal, and expressive suppression were associated with lower ER success. Findings suggest that in a controlled setting, depressive symptoms did not strongly predict selection (i.e., use) or effectiveness (i.e., success) of ER strategies, with the exceptions of less savoring as well as less use and effectiveness of bodily awareness. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).