Emotion Regulation Goals and Strategies of Individuals with Low Distress Tolerance

doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-4911625/v1

Download PDF

Research Article

Emotion Regulation Goals and Strategies of Individuals with Low Distress Tolerance

https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-4911625/v1

This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License

Version 1

posted

You are reading this latest preprint version

Studies have shown that goals determine strategies in the emotion regulation processes. However, poor distress tolerance is related to a higher use of maladaptive strategies. This research examines the relationships between distress tolerance, goals, and strategies of emotion regulation. Furthermore, it investigates the daily goals and strategies of individuals with low distress tolerance. In Study 1, students at the University of Tehran (N = 258; Mean age = 22.63) completed self-report measures; in the next study, the students with low distress tolerance (N = 78; Mean age = 21.7) recorded their daily goals and strategies for 14 consecutive days. Linear regression and multilevel modeling were used to analyze the data from Study 1 and 2, respectively. Distress tolerance was negatively associated with impression management and pro-social goals, as well as experiential avoidance, expressive suppression, and rumination strategies. Moreover, distress tolerance predicted a higher use of cognitive reappraisal. In Study 2, impression management goals and experiential avoidance had more frequency and stability (trait). Across both studies, impression management goals were related to a greater use of experiential avoidance, expressive suppression, and rumination. Additionally, pro-hedonic goals were positively related to cognitive reappraisal and negatively related to expressive suppression. However, the findings regarding the relationships between pro-social goals and strategies were mixed. The current studies indicate that the ability to tolerate distress has a significant impact on emotion regulation goals as well as strategies. Moreover, different strategies are predicted by different goals at the habitual and daily levels, and in general and low distress tolerance populations.

Psychology

negative emotions

emotion regulation

distress tolerance

coping mechanisms

Although the generation of emotions may happen outside of humans' deliberate control, individuals often monitor, evaluate, and modulate their emotional reactions in an active way (Kuppens & Verduyn, 2017). The emotion regulation process refers to efforts to influence which emotions one has, when one has them, and how one experiences or expresses these emotions (Gross, 1998). The emotion regulation begins with evaluating the ongoing emotion and identifying the discrepancy between the current and intended emotional state, which can activate the emotion goal (e.g., reducing negative emotions). Then, individuals evaluate their available strategies and select one (e.g., distraction) that enables them to achieve the determined goal (Greenaway et al., 2021). Both stages of goal identification and strategy selection in emotion regulation involve making a decision about whether a given emotional state should be changed and how the generation process of emotion should be intervened. Therefore, goals have a crucial role at the initiation and cessation of emotion regulation. The strategy selection process, based on goal(s), determines the effectiveness of emotion regulation. Strategies are the methods that individuals utilize to alter their emotional experiences and expressions. These strategies include changing one's way of thinking about the situation (cognitive reappraisal), controlling ongoing emotion-expressive behavior (expressive suppression; Gross, 1998), focusing on the experience of negative emotion and its reasons (rumination; Nolen-Hoeksema, 2000), and utilizing a set of behaviors to avoid emotional experiences (experiential avoidance; Hayes et al., 2004). For example, to reduce negative emotions, cognitive reappraisal is more effective than expressive suppression (Mohammed et al., 2021), and there is also a reciprocal relationship between rumination and negative affect (Blanke et al., 2022). Previous studies have used individual difference and contextual approaches to examine emotion regulation goals (English et al., 2017). Additionally, the characteristics related to the context, as well as the person and emotion, determine the adaptability of emotion regulation (Gross, 2015). Hence, the goal-strategy suitability not only determines the effectiveness of emotion regulation but also is crucial for its adaptability (Nardelli, 2023).

Different Goals for Different Strategies

Contrary to the common assumption that emotion regulation solely aims to reduce negative emotions or increase positive ones (Riediger et al., 2009), recent research has identified two primary categories of emotion regulation motives: hedonic and instrumental goals. Hedonic goals directly seek to alter emotional responses, such as the motivation to experience a positive feeling or pro-hedonic goals. Instrumental goals, on the other hand, are classified as non-emotional goals employed to alter emotional responses as a means to achieve the intended desires (e.g., to improve performance or acquire knowledge; Tamir, 2016). This study examines pro-social (desire to maintain or improve social relationships) and impression management goals (desire to be perceived in a certain way by others), as instrumental motives, in addition to pro-hedonic goals. Pro-hedonic goals have been found to be positively associated with increased cognitive reappraisal and decreased expressive suppression in both cross-sectional and experience sampling research. Expressive suppression is related to experiencing heightened negative emotions, which results in less effectiveness for pro-hedonic goals (Eldesouky & English, 2019b; English et al., 2017; Kalokerinos et al., 2015). In addition, impression management goals were positively associated with expressive suppression and rumination (Brandão et al., 2023b). In another study, impression management and pro-social goals were related to higher use of expressive suppression (Wilms et al., 2020). Consistently, experimental studies have shown that people choose different strategies to achieve different goals in order to change their current emotional state, since every strategy is effective for certain goals and contexts (Moeck et al., 2023). As well as direct relationships between goals and strategies, discovering personality traits that are able to predict emotion regulation goals and strategies is also proposed by previous studies (Barańczuk, 2019; Hughes et al., 2020).One of the suggested traits is that the person's perceived tolerance ability against negative emotions, or distress tolerance, plays a critical role in selecting emotion regulation goals and strategies (Jeffries et al., 2016). Limited tolerance for negative emotions results in experiencing these emotions more intensely. Thus, the person faces difficulties in evaluating and identifying their goals and strategies in the emotion regulation processes (Naragon-Gainey et al., 2017).

Distress Tolerance in Emotion Regulation

Since every phase of emotion regulation is initiated by the identification of a goal, emotion regulation attempts, whether deliberate or automatic, are goal-directed behaviors. However, individuals with low distress tolerance cannot easily tolerate negative states, which confines their ability to achieve personal goals during times of distress (Andrés et al., 2021). Limited regulatory skills lead to a higher level of emotional discomfort, which forces people to underestimate their ability to deal with distress and engage in a range of maladaptive behaviors to escape from this state (Van Eck et al., 2017). According to Bardeen and his colleagues (2015), a negative relationship was observed between difficulties in accessing effective emotion regulation strategies and behavioral measures of distress tolerance. Low distress tolerance is related to difficulty in recalling and using adaptive strategies, such as cognitive reappraisal, as well as predicting the use of maladaptive strategies, such as expressive suppression, experiential avoidance, and rumination (Jeffries et al., 2016). In addition to experimental and retrospective designs, the employment of the experience sampling method shows that there is a dynamic, bidirectional relationship between the level of negative affect and the utilization of different strategies. The study showed that negative affects predicted lower within-person variability (trait), lower subsequent use of adaptive strategies (e.g., acceptance), and higher subsequent maladaptive strategies (e.g., rumination). Furthermore, reappraisal was related to lower subsequent levels of negative affect, while expressive suppression predicted higher subsequent negative affect (Wang et al., 2024).

Not only personality traits, but cultural beliefs and values can influence the evaluation of emotion and its regulation, as a result, they affect individuals' emotion regulation goals and strategies(Matthews et al., 2021). There is limited investigation focusing on emotion regulation goals in Iran; however, strategies, including experiential avoidance and rumination, were negatively predicted by distress tolerance (Sedighi Arfaee et al., 2021). Therefore, assessing the relationships between distress tolerance and emotion regulation goals and strategies in one of the Middle Eastern countries can help expand the cultural variation of existing literature from other societies.

The Current Study

To the best of our knowledge, studies have established that distress tolerance is associated with certain maladaptive strategies; however, its role in predicting emotion regulation goals remains unknown. Furthermore, sampling the emotional experiences of people with low distress tolerance by focusing on their daily goals and strategies can reveal new findings. Hence, the present study aims to investigate the capacity of distress tolerance to affect the goals and strategies of emotion regulation, utilizing a cross-sectional correlational method in Study 1 and experience sampling in Study 2. Furthermore, in both studies, the direct relationship between goals and strategies was examined. Therefore, in order to highlight both individual differences and contextual approaches, two separate studies were conducted, utilizing self-report scales to measure habitual and daily emotion regulation.

Method

Participants

The sample consisted of 258 students (83.6% women) from the faculties of management and accounting (60%) and psychology (40%) at the University of Tehran, who voluntarily participated in the study. The sample ranged in age from 18 to 32 years (M: 22.63, SD: 3.42). The participants were pursuing undergraduate degrees (85%) or postgraduate degrees (15%). All participants were Iranian nationals. Students who were interested in participating in the study were given a link, and data collection was conducted online through a secure website during the fall of 2023. First, the study's main objectives and ethical considerations were explained. Then, the participants provided informed consent and answered a series of questionnaires. Finally, 11 answers were removed due to random filling or insufficient completeness. No material reward was considered for the participants. In justifying the sample size (N=258), general approaches suggest having a minimum of 10-15 participants per predictor variable (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2013) or a minimum of 10-20 participants per parameter for multiple regression analysis (Jenkins & Quintana-Ascencio, 2020). For the current regression analysis, each predictor variable adds a parameter to the model, and the intercept term also adds a parameter. Therefore, the number of parameters for regression analysis is 2 (1 predictor + 1 intercept) and 4 (3 predictors + 1 intercept), for distress tolerance and emotion regulation goals, respectively. Based on this, a sample size of 60-120 would be required, which is a relatively small sample size. The current sample is sufficient, given the research goal of formulating new hypotheses, but may not be sufficient for a confirmatory study that requires a high level of precision. Nevertheless, there are limitations in the generalizability and interpretation of the study's findings. Since this sample size results in a margin of error of 6.08%, at the 95% confidence interval, slightly exceeding the desired margin of 5%. However, this was a compromise between the desired level of precision and the available resources, and still enables us to make valuable inferences and recognize patterns that can guide future research.

Measures

Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (ERQ; Gross & John, 2003) is designed to evaluate individual differences in the habitual use of cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression. In total, six items are dedicated to cognitive reappraisal (e.g., "I control my emotions by altering my perception about the situation I am in"), and four items are dedicated to expressive suppression (e.g., "I control my emotions by not expressing them"). Scoring is based on a 7-point Likert scale. Cognitive reappraisal (α: 0.89-0.90) and expressive suppression (α: 0.76-0.80) exhibit acceptable internal consistency reliability (Preece et al., 2020). Here, the Cronbach's alpha for cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression was 0.84 and 0.77, respectively.

Distress Tolerance Scale (DTS; Simons & Gaher, 2005) is a self-report instrument with 15 items that have four factors. Only tolerance was utilized in this study. Tolerance, consisting of three items, expresses a person's perception of their ability to control strong negative emotions (e.g., "I can't handle feeling distressed or upset"). Scoring is based on a 5-point Likert scale. The validity of the Cronbach's alpha was 0.86 for the total scale and 0.72 for the tolerance subscale, respectively. Here, the Cronbach's alpha of the tolerance subscale was 0.78.

Emotion Regulation Goals Questionnaire (ERGQ; Eldesouky & English, 2019b), which consists of 18 items, has a five-factor structure that includes pro-hedonic, contra-hedonic, performance, pro-social, and impression management goals (e.g., "pro-hedonic: To feel more positive emotions like joy or contentment; pro-social: To make someone else feel well"). The items are measured using a 7-point Likert scale. The reliability of the sub-scales was found to be within an acceptable range, with the Cronbach's alpha coefficients of 0.75, 0.85, and 0.86 for pro-hedonic, pro-social, and impression management goals, respectively.

Acceptance and Action Questionnaire-II (AAQ-II; Bond et al., 2011) measures experiential avoidance and has a one-factor structure. It consists of seven items, with scores determined using a 7-point Likert scale (e.g., "My painful memories prevent me from enjoying a fulfilling life"). The Cronbach's alpha for the entire scale was calculated to be 0.92.

Rumination-Reflection Questionnaire (RRQ; Trapnell & Campbell, 1999) is a 24-item self-report measure of self-consciousness, divided into positively motivated reflection and negatively motivated rumination. The Rumination subscale reflects self-attentiveness motivated by perceived threats, losses, or injustices to the self (e.g., "My attention is often focused on aspects of myself I wish to stop thinking about"). Scoring is based on a 5-point Likert scale. Here, the Cronbach's alpha for the subscale (0.92) was in the excellent range.

Data analysis

The present study aims to discover the relationship between distress tolerance and emotion regulation goals and strategies, as well as the direct relationship between goals and strategies. Therefore, a series of linear regression models was performed with distress tolerance predicting goals and strategies. Subsequently, a multiple regression analysis was conducted to examine the simultaneous effects of goals on strategies. The data analysis did not reveal any evidence of skewness or outlier values related to the variables being examined. Additionally, the achieved variance inflation factor values are in the range of 1-2, indicating the absence of multicollinearity problems. A significance threshold of α = 0.05 was adopted to strike a balance between Type I error control and statistical power.

Table 1 Means, SDs, and Regression Analyses of Distress Tolerance predicting Emotion Regulation Goals and Strategies

IM	PS	PH	RU	EA	ES	CR
18.46(5.67)	24.9(6.06)	13.28(3.5)	40.64(9.97)	23.88(9.8)	13.4(5.07)	28(6.77)	Mean(SD)
-.43^**	-.298^**	.112	-.566^**	-.694^**	-.186^*	.269^**	DT

Note. DT: distress tolerance, CR: cognitive reappraisal, ES: expressive suppression, EA: experiential avoidance, RU: rumination, PH: pro-hedonic, PS: pro-social, IM: impression management. *p < .05, **p < .01.

Results

The sample's average distress tolerance score was 8.68 (SD = 3.1). A negative correlation was found between distress tolerance and pro-social goals (p = .003) and impression management (p < .001) goals. Additionally, a lower level of distress tolerance was associated with greater experiential avoidance (p < .001), rumination (p < .001), and expressive suppression (p = .01). However, distress tolerance was positively associated with cognitive reappraisal (p < .001). In contrast to the research hypothesis, no significant relationship was observed between distress tolerance and pro-hedonic goals (p = .12). Concerning the direct relationships between goals and strategies, higher levels of pro-hedonic goals were related to higher cognitive reappraisal (p = .007) and lower levels of expressive suppression (p = .004). A negative relationship was observed between pro-social goals and experiential avoidance (p = .004) and rumination (p = .036). Furthermore, impression management goals were positively associated with experiential avoidance (p < .001), rumination (p < .001), and expressive suppression (p = .037).

Table 2 Regression analyses of typical emotion regulation goals predicting habitual emotion regulation strategies

Rumination		Experiential avoidance		Expressive suppression		Cognitive reappraisal
CI	b	CI	b	CI	b	CI	b
.271		.326		.053		.123		Adjusted R²
[-.595, .117]	-.084	[-.462, .118]	-.187	[-.504, -.091]	-.205^**	[.219, .605]	.405^**	Pro-hedonic
[-.504, -.027]	-.244^*	[-.542, -.09]	-.285^**	[-.273, .004]	-.161	[-.177, .179]	.01	Pro-social
[.314, .764]	.531^**	[.372, .755]	.601^**	[.073, .357]	.24^*	[-.271, .093]	.075	Impression management

Note. *p < .05, **p < .01.

Discussion

The results of the first study revealed significant correlations between distress tolerance and emotion regulation goals and strategies. Distress tolerance was negatively related to impression management and pro-social goals, as well as to experiential avoidance, rumination, and expressive suppression. The obtained relationships are considered critical due to their ability to reveal the role of distress tolerance in predicting emotion regulation goals and strategies. In addition, the findings exhibit a series of associations between goals and strategies, with each goal predicting specific strategies. However, the current results were achieved from global questionnaires, which were partially biased by participants' judgments and memories. Furthermore, this approach is commonly assumed to measure individual differences in typical goals and habitual strategies at a single point in time. However, experience sampling provides the opportunity to discover the daily dynamics of goals and strategies by emphasizing the situational nature of emotion regulation, whereas measures with global questionnaires supposedly reflect what individuals would do across time and different contexts (Ellison et al., 2020). Hence, the experience sampling method was used in the second study to review the findings.

Study 2 was conducted to build upon the results of Study 1 by measuring the daily goals and strategies of individuals with low distress tolerance. The frequency, variability, and correlations of goals and strategies were studied. To this end, the participants recorded their emotion regulation efforts, including goals and strategies, for 14 consecutive days.

Method

Participants

In total, 78 female students aged 18-28 years old (M = 21.7, SD = 4.3) from a university in Tehran participated in the study, which was announced as a student project. They were recruited via social media and on-campus sites. All participants were solely Iranian and were at the undergraduate (84%) and postgraduate (16%) levels. Furthermore, participants received feedback about their emotion regulation as an incentive, and those who completed at least 80% of the episodes were rewarded. The sample size and design of the study are sufficient to identify correlations with a minimum effect size of r = 0.22, with a desired power of 0.80. This suggests that the study is capable of detecting relatively small, yet still meaningful, effects within the moderate range, making it suitable for exploratory research purposes.

Procedure

In December 2023, participants provided written informed consent and completed a survey that gathered demographic information (age, gender, and education level) and self-reported distress tolerance capacity during the screening process. Following the initial three-week measurement period, individuals with poor distress tolerance were invited to a one-hour training session, during which the ethical considerations and guidelines for completing daily measurements of emotion regulation goals and strategies were explained. The participants could complete the questionnaire for that day from 6-11 pm through a secure website. A reminder message was sent to the participants by email every evening at 7 pm. The average time to answer the questions was 86 seconds (SD = 12). The aforementioned time was 43 seconds (SD = 9) in episodes without emotion regulation. The participants who completed less than 50% of the episodes (n = 7) were excluded. The average response for each participant was 9.47 (SD = 2.83). Finally, a total of 904 reported episodes were collected, but 126 episodes were not included in the analysis because of no recall of negative emotion or emotion regulation or being completed in less than 30 seconds. The researcher was available via email to address participants' questions or issues throughout the study.

Measures

At the screening stage, the participants' capacity for distress tolerance was measured using the tolerance subscale of Distress Tolerance Scale (Gaher & Simmons, 2005), which consists of three items scored on a 5-point Likert scale. Participants who scored less than 9 were included in the study. In each episode, if participants reported experiencing negative emotions and attempting to regulate them, they were directed to items related to regulatory goals and strategies. They were asked to recall the event with the most negative emotions and rate the intensity and valence of that emotion to improve their clear recall of the emotion and event. Regulatory motives included pro-hedonic, pro-social, and impression management goals, and the examined strategies were cognitive reappraisal, expressive suppression, experiential avoidance, and rumination, similar to the first study. The degree to which each of the goals and strategies was employed in regulatory efforts was measured on a 7-point scale (1: Not at all to 7: Considerably). Each of the goals (e.g., pro-hedonic goals: I aimed to increase my positive emotions or reduce my negative emotions) and strategies (cognitive reappraisal: I tried to alter my thoughts or look at the situation from a different perspective) was measured with an item adapted from the questionnaires used in Study 1. To control the duration of the daily reports, additional questions related to the events of the same day (e.g., I spent most of the day on my assignments) were asked in cases where participants reported no experience of negative emotion or no attempt to regulate such emotion.

Data analysis

Multilevel modeling was employed using the lme4 package in R software to account for the nested structure of the experience sampling data, which consisted of multiple measurements from each participant. This approach enabled the accurate parsing of variance at both the between- and within-person levels (Singer & Willett, 2003). The daily responses were nested within participants, with Level 1 representing the day level and Level 2 representing the participant level. Consequently, Level 1 predictors included time and within-person goals, while Level 2 contained between-person goals. To separate within- and between-person levels of variables, each goal was grand-mean centered, and the grand-mean centered goals were person-centered. Prior values of each endogenous variable were controlled for to account for changes that occurred before the experience. To address minor deviations from normality (skewness or kurtosis > 1.00) in certain variables, a square root transformation was applied to all variables. Maximum likelihood estimation was used to account for missing data. To examine the relationships between goals and strategies, separate two-level models with within- and between-person scores were designed for each goal, predicting each strategy simultaneously. Random slopes were calculated to account for within-person effects, and no convergence problems were encountered. An alpha level of 0.05 was chosen as the significance threshold to detect significant effects while minimizing the likelihood of chance findings. Following the recommendations for multilevel modeling, semi-partial R² (R_β²) values were calculated as an index of effect size (Edwards et al., 2008). The magnitude of small, medium, and large effects was set at 0.02, 0.13, and 0.26, respectively. Table 4 presents the intercepts (representing mean strategy use), unstandardized coefficients, standard errors, Rβ² values, and 95% confidence intervals.

Results

The sample's distress tolerance scores ranged from 3 to 8, with a mean of 6.13 (SD = 1.94). On average, the participants attempted to regulate their negative emotions in 73% (SD = 0.18) of episodes where they experienced negative emotions. Impression management (intercept = 4.02) was considered the most prominent regulatory goal, followed by pro-social (intercept = 3.57) and pro-hedonic (intercept = 3.16) goals, respectively. The strategies employed most frequently were experiential avoidance, expressive suppression, cognitive reappraisal, and rumination, respectively (see Table 2). The intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) describes the proportions of between- and within-person variance (see Table 3), which can be interpreted as how similarly emotion regulation goals and strategies vary over time. A low ICC (e.g., cognitive reappraisal = 0.35) indicates that the observed variance in a variable is largely determined by the event and day, and the pattern of the variable varies significantly within individuals. In contrast, a high ICC (e.g., impression management = 0.64) suggests that the variance is primarily determined by the individual, and the pattern of the variable is similar across different events and days within one individual, but differs among individuals (state versus trait; Wilms et al., 2020). The model's goodness of fit was good, as indicated by the robust root mean square error of approximation (0.04) and the robust standardized root mean square residual (0.02), both of which were below the 0.05 threshold (Kline, 2016).

Table 3 Mean, SD, and ICCs for Emotion Regulation Goals and Strategies

IM	PS	PH	RU	EA	ES	CR
4.66(1.84)	3.85(1.10)	3.07(1.41)	3.94(1.26)	5.98(1.19)	4.65(1.05)	3.34(1.16)	Mean (SD)
.64	.47	.42	.38	.72	.66	.35	ICC

Note. ICC: intraclass coefficient, CR: cognitive reappraisal, ES: expressive suppression, EA: experiential avoidance, RU: rumination, PH: pro-hedonic, PS: pro-social, IM: impression management. *p < .05, **p < .01.

Table 4 MLM lagged analyses for daily emotion regulation goals predicting daily strategy use

Cognitive reappraisal

Expressive suppression

Experiential avoidance

Rumination

Predictor variables

B(SE)

R_b²

95%CI

B(SE)

R_b²

95%CI

B(SE)

R_b²

95%CI

B(SE)

R_b²

95%CI

Intercept

3.12

3.45

3.77

2.87

Pro-hedonic

Within-person

.48^**(.02)

0.01

[.28, .61]

-.37^**(.01)

.02

[-.47, -.29]

-.05(.07)

.03

[-.16, .11]

-.10(.02)

.01

[-.17, -.02]

Between-person

.41^**(.04)

0.01

[.17, .56]

-.25^*(.06)

.01

[-.38, -.13]

-.01(.06)

.00

[-.13,.16]

.02(.04)

.01

[-.03, .08]

Pro-social

Within-person

.31^*(.04)

0.01

[.19, .41]

.36^**(.02)

.00

[.22, .48]

.26^*(.04)

.00

[.18, .31]

-.08(.03)

.03

[-.12, -.03]

Between-person

.21(.05)

0.00

[.15, .27]

.24^*(.04)

.00

[.09, .41]

.28^*(.05)

.00

[.17, .39]

.01(.02)

.00

[-.01, .04]

Impression management

Within-person

.04(.04)

0.00

[-.02, 0.7]

.37^**(.02)

.02

[.25, .48]

.56^**(.03)

.02

[.42, .67]

.29^*(.06)

.01

[.17, .43]

Between-person

-.11(.03)

0.00

[-.02, .21]

.29^*(.05)

.01

[.20, .39]

.46^**(.05)

.01

[.33, .58]

.19(.08)

.01

[.08, .29]

REs

B(SE)

95%CI

B(SE)

95%CI

B(SE)

95%CI

B(SE)

95%CI

Level 2 residual

1.32^*(.13)

10.18

[1.27, 1.46]

1.37^*(.07)

10.67

[1.29, 1.46]

1.52^*(.13)

10.81

[1.38, 1.66]

1.30^*(.01)

9.72

[1.29, 1.32]

Level 1 residual

.84^*(.07)

25.33

[.75, .93]

1.18^*(.08)

27.61

[1.07, 1.27]

1.74^*(.04)

28.35

[1.69, 1.78]

.93^*(.03)

25.48

[.88, .97]

Autocorrelation

.15(.02)

9.24

[.11, .18]

.19(.02)

5.83

[.17, .22]

.26(.03)

9.72

[.21, .30]

.07(.02)

3.38

[.04, .11]

Note. B(SE): unstandardized fixed effect estimates standard errors in parentheses, 95%CI: 95% confidence intervals, R_β²: semi-partial effect size, Z: wald’s Z; Intercept: mean pursuit of each goal across days, RE: Random effect. Random slopes were included unless models showed convergence issues. Between-person effects were grand-mean centered. *p < .05, **p < .01.

Both within-person and between-person effects were calculated to determine the impact of goals on strategies. The within-person results indicate the relationship between pursuing a goal (low or high) and the use of strategies, whereas the between-person results represent the degree of difference between individuals in using strategies based on the average regulatory goals reported. At the within-person level, individuals with higher pro-hedonic goals utilized more cognitive reappraisal (p =.004) and less expressive suppression (p =.009). Pro-social goals were positively related to experiential avoidance (p =.035), cognitive reappraisal (p =.017), and expressive suppression (p =.008) strategies. Furthermore, a positive relationship was observed between impression management goals and experiential avoidance (p <.001), expressive suppression (p =.004), and rumination (p =.038). The aforementioned relationships were significant after controlling for other goals and time. In certain instances, the within-person results exceeded the between-person effects, but they were mostly comparable. For example, individuals with stronger impression management goals tended to use more experiential avoidance (p =.002) and expressive suppression (p =.018) on average. Additionally, individuals with a greater focus on hedonic goals tended to utilize more cognitive reappraisal (p =.005) and less expressive suppression (p =.020).

Discussion

The participants were screened for having poor tolerance for aversive states, which indicates that they habitually perceive distress and negative emotions as unbearable and uncontrollable. They reported stronger social goals during emotion regulation than pro-hedonic goals, and, as expected, they used experiential avoidance more than other strategies. Furthermore, the results show that in the daily emotion regulation attempts of individuals with low distress tolerance, goals play a critical role in selecting strategies. The direct relationships between goals and strategies were consistent with the first study, and each goal predicted the use of different strategies. However, impression management was related to more strategies and showed stronger relationships overall. In terms of variability, based on ICC scores, pro-hedonic and pro-social goals were used with moderate within-person variability. However, impression management goals exhibited greater stability across the reported episodes (trait). Among the strategies, cognitive reappraisal and rumination showed greater within-person variability (state), while expressive suppression and experiential avoidance exhibited greater between-person variability (trait). Nonetheless, it is important to interpret the variability cautiously as an indicator of flexibility in emotion regulation goals and strategies. Since ICC scores can be influenced by various factors, such as the number of episodes measured throughout the day, the number of items in each assessment episode, and the extent of actual changes in reported emotional situations.

A reciprocal negative relationship exists between distress tolerance and difficulties with emotion regulation, especially higher use of maladaptive strategies (e.g., Larrazabal et al., 2022). The present studies aimed to investigate the role of distress tolerance in emotion regulation goals and strategies, as well as potential relationships between these goals and strategies. To achieve this goal, two separate studies were conducted, employing both global and daily measurements. Study 1 revealed a negative correlation between distress tolerance and social goals, with distress tolerance being a stronger predictor of impression management goals than pro-social goals. Additionally, distress tolerance was found to be negatively associated with experiential avoidance, expressive suppression, and rumination. In contrast, a positive relationship was observed between distress tolerance and cognitive reappraisal. These results are consistent with previous research, which has demonstrated that psychopathology symptoms are positively correlated with rumination, experiential avoidance, and expressive suppression, and negatively correlated with cognitive reappraisal (Aldao et al., 2010). In the experience sampling study, participants were selected based on their low tolerance for negative emotions. The results showed that impression management goals and experiential avoidance strategies were the most frequently employed. Furthermore, there was reduced variability in pursuing impression management goals and utilizing experiential avoidance and expressive suppression strategies. In both studies, involving both general and low distress tolerance populations, it was found that social goals of emotion regulation, including impression management and pro-social goals, were stronger than pro-hedonic goals. Additionally, individuals with low distress tolerance tended to employ more maladaptive strategies. The following discussion will focus on the direct correlations of each emotion regulation goal.

The absence of a significant relationship between distress tolerance and pro-hedonic goals was contrary to expectations, suggesting that individuals who perceive themselves as unable to tolerate negative emotions do not strongly seek to increase their positive emotions or reduce their negative emotions. Studies have suggested a positive correlation between pro-hedonic goals and mental health outcomes. In addition, culture plays a significant role in emotion regulation goals, with Asian countries associated with fewer pro-hedonic goals compared to Western societies (Kaspi et al., 2024). Given that the studies were conducted in the Middle East, it can be hypothesized that Iranians are generally not motivated to increase their positive or decrease their negative emotions, regardless of their distress tolerance level. Consistent with prior investigations, pro-hedonic goals were positively related to cognitive reappraisal and negatively related to expressive suppression in both studies (Brandão et al., 2023b; Nezlek & Kuppens, 2008). Similarly, an experimental study found that individuals who received social messages encouraging cognitive reappraisal were more successful in reducing their negative emotions than those who received messages encouraging expressive suppression (Kemp et al., 2020). Furthermore, Yang and colleagues (2020) argued that individuals with high neuroticism employed less cognitive reappraisal and exhibited less cognitive control during its implementation to reduce negative emotions. In contrast, research highlighting hedonic and eudaimonic motives aims to increase subjective well-being, which consists of three factors: general life satisfaction, high positive affect, and low negative affect (-004-). Previous studies on subjective well-being motives and emotion regulation motives, including the current ones, have discovered associations that seem to contradict each other. Nonetheless, their classification is comparable (hedonic and eudaimonic motives are similar to pro-hedonic and instrumental goals of emotion regulation), and both are endpoints that involve altering affective states. Conversely, eudaimonic motives were found to be more important for elevating subjective well-being and mental health outcomes. However, studies investigating emotion regulation goals found that pro-hedonic goals are the only regulatory motive related to better mental health, while impression management and pro-social goals as instrumental motives were related to poorer mental health and maladaptive strategies. Nevertheless, researchers investigating either subjective well-being or emotion regulation suggest that using both types of motives is more adaptive.

Poor distress tolerance was found to be related to stronger pro-social goals at the global level. Consistently, a positive relationship has been observed between pro-social goals and the personality traits of anxious attachment and agreeableness (Brandão et al., 2023a; Eldesouky & English, 2019a). Additionally, pro-social goals were negatively associated with the habitual use of rumination and experiential avoidance during the global measurement. However, a positive relationship was observed between these goals and cognitive reappraisal, expressive suppression, and experiential avoidance during the daily measurement. Similar studies have reported a positive relationship between pro-social goals and rumination and cognitive reappraisal (Brandão et al., 2023b; Eldesouky & English, 2019b). Considering pro-social motives as a cluster of different goals with two poles of egocentrism and altruism could explain the mixed findings regarding these goals (associations with both adaptive and maladaptive strategies). Egocentrism aims to increase the individual's well-being and includes motives such as reducing negative emotions and seeking approval. On the other hand, altruistic motives seek to increase the well-being of others, which includes internalized principles and empathic concern (Batson, 2022). The current findings, as well as similar investigations, have focused on the generation and regulation of participants' emotions in social contexts. Therefore, the level of focus on regulating one's own emotions and being preoccupied with self-referential appraisals can intensify negative emotions, leading to more emotion regulation difficulties (Shuman, 2013). Furthermore, pro-social goals have the potential to initiate both self-focused and others-focused emotion regulation. Future studies should investigate this group of regulatory goals to provide more explicit results.

Generally, emotion regulation with impression management goals leads to extensive undesirable consequences (see, e.g., Sezer, 2022). A negative relationship was found between distress tolerance and impression management goals, suggesting that individuals with low distress tolerance are more concerned about their emotional expression and attentive to their own emotional cues. Consistently, a positive relationship was observed between impression management goals and anxious attachment, as well as neuroticism (Brandão et al., 2023a; Eldesouky & English, 2019a). Furthermore, impression management goals positively predicted experiential avoidance, rumination, and expressive suppression at both habitual and daily levels. Similarly, a positive relationship was reported between impression management goals and greater use of expressive suppression and rumination in a similar study (Brandão et al., 2023b). Although impression management motives have recently been introduced as an emotion regulation goal, similar concepts such as self-presentation concerns (Schütz, 1998), rejection sensitivity (Downey et al., 1997), and seeking social approval (Millham & Kellogg, 1980) involve a mental preoccupation with being perceived in a certain way by others. This preoccupation can lead to maladaptive emotion regulation strategies and poor mental health (e.g., Gao et al., 2017). A recent study has shown that fear of being evaluated by others, either positively or negatively, plays a central role in the maintenance and treatment of social anxiety disorders (Zhang et al., 2023).

Limitation and Future Directions

Both studies faced several limitations. Social relationships can trigger emotions and direct their regulatory process, and future research could explore the role of different interpersonal contexts, such as family versus work relationships, in emotion regulation goals and strategies, as well as examining interpersonal strategies. Another limitation within the contextual framework was the failure to measure the person's response to emotion regulation goals, such as avoidance versus approach, which can affect the strategy selection process. Having a goal and actually striving to achieve it are distinct concepts, which were not measured in these studies. Additionally, the current study could have utilized the experience sampling method to assess the dynamic nature of distress tolerance, similar to emotion regulation; however, only global measurements were used to measure distress tolerance. Furthermore, the first study relied solely on cross-sectional correlations between goals and strategies, which cannot determine the role of distress tolerance in emotion regulation effectiveness. The second study investigated real-life goals and strategies, but the effectiveness of emotion regulation attempts by individuals with low distress tolerance was not measured during the daily reports. Future studies can use experience sampling and experimental designs to assess emotion regulation effectiveness. Another limitation was the use of correlation methods, which do not allow for the establishment of causal relationships. Therefore, it is necessary to conduct experimental and longitudinal studies. Future research could address the current findings by employing random sampling methods with a more suitable sample size, as the current studies were conducted using convenience sampling. Lastly, the conducted studies focused on the academic community and the female gender, and it is recommended that future research consider gender and age diversity.

The findings indicate that distress tolerance can predict emotion regulation goals and strategies. In the cross-sectional study, distress tolerance was found to be negatively associated with pro-social and impression management goals, as well as experiential avoidance, rumination, and expressive suppression. Additionally, a positive relationship was observed between distress tolerance and cognitive reappraisal. In the experience sampling study, impression management and experiential avoidance were found to be the most frequent and least variable goal and strategy of emotion regulation among individuals with low distress tolerance. Regarding the goal-strategy relationships, pro-hedonic goals exhibited a positive relationship with cognitive reappraisal and a negative relationship with expressive suppression, while impression management goals exhibited a positive relationship with experiential avoidance, expressive suppression, and rumination in both studies. Furthermore, a negative relationship was found between pro-social goals and experiential avoidance and rumination at the global level, and a positive relationship was found between pro-social goals and cognitive reappraisal, expressive suppression, and experiential avoidance at the daily level.

This study was reviewed and approved by Research Ethics Committees of Allameh Tabataba'i University (ATU).

Aldao A, Nolen-Hoeksema S, Schweizer S (2010) Emotion-regulation strategies across psychopathology: A meta-analytic review. Clin Psychol Rev 30(2):217–237. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2009.11.004
Andrés ML, del-Valle MV, Richaud de Minzi MC, Introzzi I, Canet-Juric L, Navarro-Guzmán JI (2021) Distress tolerance and executive functions: A systematic review. Psychol Neurosci 14(3):280–297. https://doi.org/10.1037/pne0000259
Barańczuk U (2019) The five factor model of personality and emotion regulation: A meta-analysis. Pers Indiv Differ 139:217–227. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2018.11.025
Bardeen JR, Tull MT, Dixon-Gordon KL, Stevens EN, Gratz KL (2015) Attentional control as a moderator of the relationship between difficulties accessing effective emotion regulation strategies and distress tolerance. J Psychopathol Behav Assess 37:79–84
Batson CD (2022) Prosocial motivation: A Lewinian approach. Motivation Sci 8(1):1. https://psycnet.apa.org/journals/mot/8/1/1/
Blanke ES, Neubauer AB, Houben M, Erbas Y, Brose A (2022) Why do my thoughts feel so bad? Getting at the reciprocal effects of rumination and negative affect using dynamic structural equation modeling. Emotion 22(8):1773. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2021-21139-001
Bond FW, Hayes SC, Baer RA, Carpenter KM, Guenole N, Orcutt HK, Waltz T, Zettle RD (2011) Preliminary psychometric properties of the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire-II: A revised measure of psychological inflexibility and experiential avoidance. Behav Ther 42(4):676–688. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beth.2011.03.007
Brandão T, Brites R, Hipólito J, Nunes O (2023a) Attachment orientations, emotion goals, and emotion regulation. Pers Indiv Differ 204:112059. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2022.112059
Brandão T, Brites R, Hipólito J, Nunes O (2023b) Emotion goals, emotion regulation, and mental health: A mediational hypothesis. Clin Psychol 27(3):290–301. https://doi.org/10.1080/13284207.2023.2214312
Downey G, Khouri H, Feldman SI (1997) Early interpersonal trauma and later adjustment: The mediational role of rejection sensitivity. Developmental perspectives on trauma: Theory, research, and intervention. University of Rochester, pp 85–114
Edwards LJ, Muller KE, Wolfinger RD, Qaqish BF, Schabenberger O (2008) An R2 statistic for fixed effects in the linear mixed model. Stat Med 27(29):6137–6157. https://doi.org/10.1002/sim.3429
Eldesouky L, English T (2019a) Individual differences in emotion regulation goals: Does personality predict the reasons why people regulate their emotions? J Pers 87(4):750–766. https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.12430
Eldesouky L, English T (2019b) Regulating for a reason: Emotion regulation goals are linked to spontaneous strategy use. J Pers 87(5):948–961
Ellison WD, Trahan AC, Pinzon JC, Gillespie ME, Simmons LM, King KY (2020) For whom, and for what, is experience sampling more accurate than retrospective report? Pers Indiv Differ 163:110071. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2020.110071
English T, Lee IA, John OP, Gross JJ (2017) Emotion regulation strategy selection in daily life: The role of social context and goals. Motivation Emot 41(2):230–242. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-016-9597-z
Gao S, Assink M, Cipriani A, Lin K (2017) Associations between rejection sensitivity and mental health outcomes: A meta-analytic review. Clin Psychol Rev 57:59–74. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2017.08.007
Gross JJ (1998) The emerging field of emotion regulation: An integrative review. Rev Gen Psychol 2(3):271–299
Gross JJ (2015) The Extended Process Model of Emotion Regulation: Elaborations, Applications, and Future Directions. Psychol Inq 26(1):130–137. https://doi.org/10.1080/1047840X.2015.989751
Gross JJ, John OP (2003) Individual differences in two emotion regulation processes: Implications for affect, relationships, and well-being. J Personal Soc Psychol 85(2):348
Hayes SC, Strosahl K, Wilson KG, Bissett RT, Pistorello J, Toarmino D, Polusny MA, Dykstra TA, Batten SV, Bergan J (2004) Measuring experiential avoidance: A preliminary test of a working model. Psychol Record 54:553–578
Hughes DJ, Kratsiotis IK, Niven K, Holman D (2020) Personality traits and emotion regulation: A targeted review and recommendations. Emotion 20(1):63–67. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000644
Jeffries ER, McLeish AC, Kraemer KM, Avallone KM, Fleming JB (2016) The role of distress tolerance in the use of specific emotion regulation strategies. Behav Modif 40(3):439–451
Jenkins DG, Quintana-Ascencio PF (2020) A solution to minimum sample size for regressions. PLoS ONE 15(2):e0229345. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0229345
Kalokerinos EK, Greenaway KH, Denson TF (2015) Reappraisal but not suppression downregulates the experience of positive and negative emotion. Emotion 15(3):271–275. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000025
Kaspi L, Hu D, Vishkin A, Chentsova-Dutton Y, Miyamoto Y, Cieciuch J, Cohen A, Kim M, Wang X, Qiu J (2024) Motivated to Feel Better and Doing Something About It: Cross-Cultural Differences in Motivated Emotion Regulation During Covid-19. Emotion, In-Press. https://pureportal.coventry.ac.uk/en/publications/motivated-to-feel-better-and-doing-something-about-it-cross-cultu
Kemp E, Cowart K, Bui M, Myla (2020) Promoting consumer well-being: Examining emotion regulation strategies in social advertising messages. J Bus Res 112:200–209. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2020.03.010
Kuppens P, Verduyn P (2017) Emotion dynamics. Curr Opin Psychol 17:22–26. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2017.06.004
Larrazabal MA, Naragon-Gainey K, Conway CC (2022) Distress tolerance and stress-induced emotion regulation behavior. J Res Pers 99:104243. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2022.104243
Matthews M, Webb TL, Shafir R, Snow M, Sheppes G (2021) Identifying the determinants of emotion regulation choice: A systematic review with meta-analysis. Cognition Emot 35(6):1056–1084. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2021.1945538
Millham J, Kellogg RW (1980) Need for social approval: Impression management or self-deception? J Res Pers 14(4):445–457. https://doi.org/10.1016/0092-6566(80)90003-3
Moeck E, Greenaway KH, Bianchi V, Gross J, Koval P, Kalokerinos EK (2023) Uncertainty Moderates the Emotional Consequences of Reappraisal, Social Sharing, and Rumination in Daily Lif. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/8qzce
Mohammed A-R, Kosonogov V, Lyusin D (2021) Expressive suppression versus cognitive reappraisal: Effects on self-report and peripheral psychophysiology. Int J Psychophysiol 167:30–37. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167876021001872
Naragon-Gainey K, McMahon TP, Chacko TP (2017) The structure of common emotion regulation strategies: A meta-analytic examination. Psychol Bull 143(4):384–427. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000093
Nardelli C (2023) From emotion regulation to emotion regulation flexibility. Nat Reviews Psychol 2(11):660–660. https://www.nature.com/articles/s44159-023-00237-1
Nezlek JB, Kuppens P (2008) Regulating Positive and Negative Emotions in Daily Life. J Pers 76(3):561–580. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6494.2008.00496.x
Nolen-Hoeksema S (2000) The role of rumination in depressive disorders and mixed anxiety/depressive symptoms. J Abnorm Psychol 109(3):504. https://psycnet.apa.org/journals/abn/109/3/504/
Preece DA, Becerra R, Robinson K, Gross JJ (2020) The Emotion Regulation Questionnaire: Psychometric Properties in General Community Samples. J Pers Assess 102(3):348–356. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223891.2018.1564319
Riediger M, Schmiedek F, Wagner GG, Lindenberger U (2009) Seeking Pleasure and Seeking Pain: Differences in Prohedonic and Contra-Hedonic Motivation From Adolescence to Old Age. Psychol Sci 20(12):1529–1535. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02473.x
Schütz A (1998) Assertive, Offensive, Protective, and Defensive Styles of Self-Presentation: A Taxonomy. J Psychol 132(6):611–628. https://doi.org/10.1080/00223989809599293
Sedighi Arfaee F, Rashidi A, Tabesh R (2021) The distress tolerance in the elderly: The role of experiential avoidance, rumination and mindfulness. Aging Psychol 7(1):12–11. https://jap.razi.ac.ir/article_1725_en.html?lang=fa
Sezer O (2022) Impression (mis)management: When what you say is not what they hear. Curr Opin Psychol 44:31–37. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2021.08.025
Shuman V (2013) Studying the social dimension of emotion regulation. Front Psychol 4:922. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00922
Simons JS, Gaher RM (2005) The Distress Tolerance Scale: Development and validation of a self-report measure. Motivation Emot 29:83–102. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-005-7955-3
Singer JD, Willett JB (2003) Applied Longitudinal Data Analysis: Modeling Change and Event Occurrence. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195152968.001.0001
Tabachnick BG, Fidell LS, Ullman JB (2013) Using multivariate statistics (Vol. 6). pearson Boston, MA. https://www.pearsonhighered.com/assets/preface/0/1/3/4/0134790545.pdf
Tamir M (2016) Why do people regulate their emotions? A taxonomy of motives in emotion regulation. Personality Social Psychol Rev 20(3):199–222
Trapnell PD, Campbell JD (1999) Private self-consciousness and the five-factor model of personality: Distinguishing rumination from reflection. J Personal Soc Psychol 76(2):284–304. https://doi.org/10.1037//0022-3514.76.2.284
Van Eck K, Warren P, Flory K (2017) A Variable-Centered and Person-Centered Evaluation of Emotion Regulation and Distress Tolerance: Links to Emotional and Behavioral Concerns. J Youth Adolesc 46(1):136–150. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10964-016-0542-y
Wang X, Shao S, Cai Z, Ma C, Jia L, Blain SD, Tan Y (2024) Reciprocal effects between negative affect and emotion regulation in daily life. Behav Res Ther 176:104518. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2024.104518
Wilms R, Lanwehr R, Kastenmüller A (2020) Emotion Regulation in Everyday Life: The Role of Goals and Situational Factors. Front Psychol 11:877. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00877
Yang J, Mao Y, Niu Y, Wei D, Wang X, Qiu J (2020) Individual differences in neuroticism personality trait in emotion regulation. J Affect Disord 265:468–474. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2020.01.086
Zhang Y, Chen J, Gao W, Chen W, Xiao Z, Qi Y, Turel O, He Q (2023) From fears of evaluation to social anxiety: The longitudinal relationships and neural basis in healthy young adults. Int J Clin Health Psychol 23(2):100345. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijchp.2022.100345

The authors declare no competing interests.

Download PDF

Version 1

posted

You are reading this latest preprint version

Emotion Regulation Goals and Strategies of Individuals with Low Distress Tolerance

Status:

Version 1

Abstract

Introduction

Study 1

Study 2

General Discussion

Limitation and Future Directions

Conclusion

Declarations

References

Additional Declarations

Status:

Version 1