Interpersonal Emotion Regulation and Depressive Symptoms Among Emerging Adults During the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Application and Extension of the Social Context Hypothesis

Abstract

Although individuals frequently recruit the help of others to regulate their own emotions in response to stressful circumstances (i.e., interpersonal emotion regulation; Williams et al., 2018), research has focused disproportionally on processes individuals engage in to regulate their emotions independently (i.e., intrapersonal emotion regulation). While the effective use of interpersonal emotion regulation can promote psychological health (Zaki & Williams, 2013), it can also contribute to psychological distress (Hofmann, 2014). Explanations for when interpersonal emotion regulation strategies are associated with different adaptive and maladaptive outcomes remain largely theoretical and unknown. Two studies were conducted to examine concurrent and prospective associations between emerging adults’ self-reported tendencies to use four interpersonal emotion regulation strategies (i.e., enhancing positive affect, perspective taking, soothing, social modeling) and their depressive symptoms within two distinct contextual factors. In Study 1 (n = 26), I examined the prospective associations between these strategies and depressive symptoms in the context of a universal real-life stressor: the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. A greater tendency to seek out interactions to gain alternative perspectives prior to the pandemic onset was uniquely associated with decreases in depressive symptoms one month later, which was immediately following the initial COVID-19-related lockdown in March 2020. In Study 2 (n = 244), I used a cross-sectional, a one-month longitudinal design, and an experience sampling methodology component to 1) apply and 2) extend the social context hypothesis (Marroquin & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2015) to interpersonal emotion regulation. Specifically, I tested whether 1) perceived social connectedness and 2) desired emotional closeness moderate the associations between interpersonal emotion regulation strategies and depressive symptoms, such that individuals with higher levels of social connectedness and desired emotional closeness would benefit more from these strategies. Although these two social-relational features did not moderate the effectiveness of interpersonal emotion regulation in this sample, a greater tendency to seek out interactions to enhance one’s positive affect was uniquely associated with fewer concurrent depressive symptoms. Alternative research designs using larger samples may help test the applicability of the social context hypothesis more thoroughly to better understand the relationship between interpersonal emotion regulation and depressive symptoms among emerging adults.