Negative and Positive Emotion Reactivity and Regulation in Adolescents: A Multimethod Investigation of Associations...

Although emotion reactivity and regulation have been linked to depressive symptoms in adolescents, prior research has largely examined these constructs in isolation and focused predominantly on negative emotions. This study addresses these gaps by simultaneously investigating reactivity and recovery (as an index of emotion regulation) across both negative and positive emotional contexts. Using a multimethod design, we assessed self-reported negative and positive emotion and respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) in adolescents (N = 110; 12-18 years; M_age = 13.60, SD_age = 1.83; 65.5% girls) who participated in a laboratory film-based task eliciting sadness, fear, and happiness, each followed by a recovery phase. Manipulation checks showed successful emotion reactivity at the self-report level. Self-reports also indicated effective recovery after the negative inductions, whereas positive emotion was not maintained after the positive induction. At the physiological level, RSA increased during the sadness induction and during recovery from the fear induction. Correlation analyses showed that higher depressive symptoms were associated with heightened self-reported negative emotion across all emotion conditions, but not with reduced positive emotion. Multilevel analyses revealed no significant interactions between depressive symptoms and reactivity or recovery for self-reported emotion or RSA. Although this study provides initial multimethod evidence on emotion reactivity and recovery in adolescence and their associations with depressive symptoms, future research should refine measurements of emotion reactivity and recovery, and replicate these findings in samples with a broader range of depressive symptoms or in clinical populations.