Interactive effects of age and mindfulness on emotion regulation flexibility: Evidence from a daily diary study

This study examined how daily mindfulness relates to the situational sensitivity of emotion regulation-that is, the extent to which individuals adjust their use of cognitive reappraisal and situation modification to the perceived controllability of daily stressors. Drawing on a lifespan perspective, we hypothesized that daily fluctuations in mindfulness would more strongly predict situationally sensitive strategy use in older compared to younger adults. Over 28 days, younger (n = 133, M_age = 24.95) and older adults (n = 119, M_age = 69.50) reported daily mindfulness, their use of emotion regulation strategies in response to the most unpleasant stressor of the day, and their perceived controllability of the stressor. Preliminary analyses indicated that older adults reported higher average levels of mindfulness than younger adults and that daily fluctuations in mindfulness were related to fluctuations in the use of both situation modification and cognitive reappraisal strategies. Unexpectedly, higher daily mindfulness was associated with greater alignment between perceived controllability and strategy use among younger, but not older, adults. When statistically controlling for person-level characteristics (i.e., gender, education, life satisfaction, positive affect, and negative affect), this age-differential effect remained robust for situation modification but was attenuated for cognitive reappraisal. Taken together, these findings suggest that mindfulness supports flexible, context-sensitive emotion, particularly among younger individuals and with regard to the use of situation modification. However, these effects did not extend to older adults or to cognitive reappraisal. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).