Getting the blues: negative affect dynamics mediate the within-person association of maladaptive emotion regulation and depression

Temporal patterns of affective functioning such as emotional inertia and instability may predict increases in depressive symptoms. However, the investigation of maladaptive emotion regulation’s role in affect dynamics and depressive symptoms at the within-individual level is still lacking. We collected intensive longitudinal data regarding momentary maladaptive emotion regulation strategies (rumination and expressive suppression) and negative affective states (NA) (measured multiple times a day), perceived stressors and depressive symptoms (measured every three days) from a general population sample during the COVID-19 pandemic’s first wave in Hungary. The final dataset included 7117 affective states surveys from 125 participants, which were aggregated in 460 three-day measurement windows. Multilevel SEM models were fit to test whether affect dynamics mediate the association between maladaptive emotion regulation strategies, negative affect intensity, and two domains of depression, anhedonia, and negative mood and thoughts. Within and between individuals, rumination indirectly predicted NA intensity and negative mood and thoughts through elevated NA instability and NA inertia. Expressive suppression had a negative indirect effect on NA intensity via NA inertia at the within-person level, while this mediation effect was positive at the between-person level. Moreover, affect dynamics were positively connected to depressive symptoms and these associations were mediated by NA intensity. These suggest that disturbances in emotion regulation are indirectly connected to depressive symptoms, mediated by specific temporal patterns in affective functioning. These findings hold both at the within- and the between-individual level. Our findings may facilitate automated depression risk assessment based on simple affective and emotion regulation time series.