Emotion Regulation Convoys: Individual and Age Differences in the Hierarchical Configuration of Emotion Regulation Behaviors in Everyday Life

Abstract

A key limitation of studying emotion regulation behavior is that there is currently no way to describe individual differences in use across a range of tactics, which could lead to investigations of intraindividual changes over time or interindividual differences as a function of personality, age, culture, or psychopathology diagnosis. We, therefore, introduce emotion regulation convoys. This research tool provides a snapshot of the hierarchy of emotion regulation tactics an individual favors across everyday life situations and how effective they are at regulating moods. We present data from a 3-month measurement burst study of emotion regulation behavior in everyday life in a sample (N = 236) of younger (18–39), middle-aged (40–59), and older adults (60–87), focusing on how individuals’ convoys may vary in how much they include tactics that involve upregulating-positivity, downregulating-negativity, upregulating-negativity, as well as acceptance, and how these may be differentially effective. Among the most frequently used tactics (top tactics), older adults used a lower proportion of negativity-downregulating tactics than younger adults (p < .001), and younger adults’ mood was more negatively affected by these tactics than middle-aged and older adults. Overall, using positivity-upregulating as a top tactic also predicted better mood post-regulation. Older adults’ emotion regulation convoys may be made up of more effective tactics; in general, they reported more positive mood post-regulation than the other age groups. Convoys help us see emotion regulation as a hierarchical configuration of potentially effective behaviors, allowing us to test for between-group differences and within-person changes more precisely.