Abstract Research finds that prohedonic emotion regulation (ER) plays a key role in psychological well-being. Despite prohedonic ER encompassing both increasing or maintaining positive affect (PA) and decreasing negative affect (NA), prohedonic ER is often examined without regard to these different forms. Research is needed to examine the frequency of these two forms of prohedonic ER and their associations with depressive symptoms to clarify their costs and benefits. In addition to investigating their frequency, we examined how they were related to perceived ER effort, difficulty, and success and whether depression moderated these associations. Participants ( N = 179; M age =35.7) completed an ecological momentary assessment (EMA) protocol where they were surveyed five times a day for 14 days. At each EMA survey, participants reported their emotional responses to the most significant event since the preceding survey, their ER goals, and their ER effort, difficulty, and perceived success. Participants also completed a self-report measure of depressive symptoms. Participants more frequently reported prohedonic ER goals to decrease NA than increase or maintain PA. The ER goal of decreasing NA was associated with higher effort and difficulty (no association with perceived success). The ER goal of increasing or maintaining PA was associated with lower difficulty and higher perceived success (no association with effort). Depressive symptoms only moderated the association between maintaining/increasing PA to predict greater perceived success. These findings suggest unique benefits associated with upregulating PA compared to downregulating NA and underscore the need to differentiate prohedonic PA and NA goals in research and treatment.
Tuck et al. (Mon,) studied this question.
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