Interpersonal emotion regulation strategies: How do they interact with negative mood regulation expectancies in explaining anxiety and depression?

Abstract

Interpersonal emotion regulation (IER) strategies are considered as individuals’ tendency to make use of other individuals to get a sense of safety or reduce the severity of distress. Despite the emerging evidence on the association of IER strategies with measures of psychological distress, examination of its interaction with other vulnerability or resilience factors is essential for better understanding of this concept. Negative Mood Regulation Expectancies (NMRE) is a resilience factor, that is conceptualized as an individual’s beliefs in the effectiveness of the strategies that they use to deal with difficult emotions and the present study aimed to examine how IER interact with NMRE in the prediction of depression and anxiety. Data were collected from 433 adults (M = 29.47, SD = 9.01) through questionnaires assessing IER, NMRE, depression, and anxiety. Results indicated that perspective taking was not significantly related to depression among individuals who have high levels of NMRE. On the other hand, low frequency of using perspective taking as an emotion regulation mechanism appeared to be linked with higher depression in individuals who have reported low levels of NMRE. It was concluded that IER strategies might have a buffering role in the case of low inner sources to deal with difficulties.