Specific Emotion Regulation Strategies Research Articles

Exploring the Relationship between Decision-Making Styles and Emotion Regulation: A Study of Police Officials in Portuguese Public Security

In public security policing, where pressure is constant, effective decision-making and emotion regulation are critical, especially for leaders. These processes significantly impact upon work results, performance, officials’ health, employee well-being, and the organizational environment. This study aims to broaden the understanding of decision-making styles and emotion-regulation strategies used by police officials in the Portuguese Public Security Police (PSP). We surveyed 138 Portuguese high-ranking police officials using two self-response questionnaires, namely the Emotion Regulation in the Workplace (ReTrab) and the Melbourne Decision Making Questionnaire (MDMQ), both translated, adapted, and validated for the Portuguese police context. A confirmatory factor analysis was conducted, followed by correlations to explore the relationship between emotion-regulation strategies and decision-making styles. Finally, through a regression analysis, the potential impact of this relationship was assessed. The results reveal that specific emotion-regulation strategies, except for adaptive ones, significantly influence and modify the decision-making styles of PSP officials. Dysfunctional and maladaptive emotion-regulation strategies lead to less adaptive decision-making styles, while functional strategies promote more adaptive styles. These findings have theoretical and practical implications, offering valuable insights for targeted training programs and interventions in the law-enforcement sector, benefiting the police personnel, the communities they serve, and public perceptions about police.

Expressive suppression mediates the relationship between sleep quality and generalized anxiety symptomology

Anxiety disorders are the most prevalent worldwide mental health disorder, resulting in high societal costs. Emotion regulation and sleep quality are associated with the development of psychopathologies including anxiety. However, it is unknown whether habitual emotion regulation strategy use can mediate the influence of sleep quality on anxiety symptomology. An opportunity sample in a healthy population completed the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index to provide a measure of sleep quality, the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire to assess habitual use of emotion regulation strategies, and the Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale to record anxiety symptomology. Data were analysed using correlation and regression-based mediation analyses. Improved sleep quality was predictive of reduced habitual use of expressive suppression and reduced anxiety symptomology. Additionally, increased use of expressive suppression was predictive of greater anxiety symptomology. Cognitive reappraisal was not associated with sleep quality or anxiety severity. Further, novel findings using mediation analyses show that expressive suppression partially mediated the relationship between sleep quality and anxiety. Whilst longitudinal and experimental research are needed to establish causality, these findings suggest that simultaneously targeting improvements in sleep quality and the use of specific emotion regulation strategies, including expressive suppression, may improve the efficacy of interventions focussed on reducing anxiety-related symptomology.

Changes in emotion regulation strategies during the pandemic: prospective pathways to adolescent depressive symptoms.

Emotion regulation (ER) is considered central in adolescent psychopathology, and ER strategies may change during challenging times, such as a global pandemic. Despite this, there remains a limited understanding of individual differences in ER mechanisms and their associations with psychopathology. This study examined whether and how cognitive reappraisal, expressive suppression, and self-compassion changed over COVID-19 and how these changes uniquely predicted adolescents' depressive symptoms. A total of 2,411 adolescents (58.6% females; Mage = 18.51, SD = 0.80) completed the Emotional Regulation Questionnaire, the Self-compassion Scale, and the Symptom Checklist-90 before COVID-19 (in 2019) and during COVID-19 (in 2020). The predictive associations between each ER strategy and depressive symptoms were tested with latent change score models. Adolescents' use of expressive suppression and self-compassion strategies both increased during COVID-19. More increases in expressive suppression predicted more depressive symptoms, whereas more increases in self-compassion predicted fewer depressive symptoms. Although, on average, cognitive reappraisal did not change, it did show significant variations within the sample - increases (vs. decreases) in cognitive appraisal predicted fewer depressive symptoms. The study indicates how adolescents' ER strategies changed during the unprecedented global pandemic. It underscores protective roles of increased cognitive reappraisal and self-compassion, as well as the adverse consequence of heightened expressive suppression on adolescents' depressive symptoms. Findings offer insights for targeted interventions aimed at addressing specific ER strategies.

The development of a novel scale to assess intra- and interpersonal emotion regulation strategies: The Emotion Regulation Strategy Scale (ERSS).

Existing emotion regulation research focuses on how individuals use different strategies to manage their own emotions-also called intra-personal emotion regulation. However, people often leverage connections with others to regulate their own emotions-interpersonal emotion regulation. The goal of the present studies was to develop a comprehensive and efficient scale-the Emotion Regulation Strategies Scale (ERSS)-to assess nine specific emotion regulation strategies that individuals use both intra-personally and interpersonally. These emotion regulation strategies were cognitive reappraisal, distraction, situation selection, problem solving, acceptance, calming, savoring, rumination, and expressive suppression. Data were collected between 2020 and 2022. Study 1 adopted a qualitative approach to establish original scale items. Results of the confirmatory factor analysis in Study 2 confirmed a nine-factor solution for both the intra- and the interpersonal scales and finalized scale items. A second confirmatory factor analysis in Study 3 found the ERSS for both the intra-personal and interpersonal scale models to possess good model fit. Correlations from Study 3 showed the ERSS subscales to be related in expected ways to existing emotion regulation scales, yet not redundant with these scales. The degree to which individuals used the range of intra- and interpersonal emotion regulation strategies assessed on the ERSS also related to the levels of clinical symptoms. The ERSS represents a comprehensive novel scale that can flexibly assess a range of specific emotion regulation strategies used both intra- and interpersonally. Future work should be conducted using the ERSS cross culturally and in clinical samples. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The affective, cognitive, and physiological effects of implementing antecedent‐focused emotion regulation strategies in childhood

AbstractDifferent components of emotional responding may be affected by using specific emotion regulation strategies that enable children's volitional self‐regulation. This study examined the affective, cognitive, and physiological effects of experimentally instructing children to deploy distraction or reappraisal to regulate negative emotion during an evocative film clip. One‐hundred eighty‐four 4‐ to 11‐year‐old children [M = 7.66 years; SD = 2.33 years; 94 girls; mixed race (36%), Latino/Latina (30%), European American (19%), African American (11%), Asian American (2%), or other (2%)] participated. Neither strategy affected observed distress or self‐reported negative emotion. Relative to a control condition, children instructed to use reappraisal reported attenuated rumination. Distraction also predicted attenuated rumination, as well as a pattern of parasympathetic reactivity indicative of disengagement that correlated with parents' reported use of minimizing and punitive emotion socialization practices. Findings underscore the utility of multi‐method approaches that examine parasympathetic activity in conjunction with volitional measures of self‐regulation.

Savouring the Present to Better Recall the Past

So far, there is evidence showing that the use of specific emotion regulation strategies in response to negatively-valenced stimuli shapes the way people subsequently remember them. However, still little is known about the potential effects of savouring positive events on the associated memories. The aim of the current study was to test whether upregulating positive emotions in response to daily positive events could make participants’ memories more salient and positively-valenced over time. To do so, we conducted an ecological momentary assessment study in order to identify the occurrence of positive events and provide participants with different emotion regulation strategies in real-time. To explore memory phenomenology, a surprise recall task for each event was performed one week after. Compared to the control condition, the manipulation of savouring led to recall the events with greater salience (i.e., more vivid, coherent, accessible, full of sensory details, first-person recalled memories) which, in turn, led to retrieve the memory more positively. Furthermore, the findings indicated that each strategy uniquely affected different phenomenological dimensions of memory. Together, we suggest that differences in the use of savouring strategies might impact memory, leading to the recall of events with higher salience and to the maintenance of their positivity over time.

Using ecological momentary assessment and machine learning techniques to predict depressive symptoms in emerging adults

The objective of this study was to predict the level of depressive symptoms in emerging adults by analyzing sociodemographic variables, affect, and emotion regulation strategies. Participants were 33 emerging adults (M = 24.43; SD = 2.80; 56.3 % women). They were asked to assess their current emotional state (positive or negative affect), recent events that may relate to that state, and emotion regulation strategies through ecological momentary assessment. Participants were prompted randomly by an app 6 times per day between 10 am and 10 pm for a seven-day period. They answered 1233 of the 2058 surveys (beeps), collectively. The analysis of observations, using Machine Learning (ML) techniques, showed that the Random Forest algorithm yields significantly better predictions than other models. The algorithm used 13 out of the 36 variables adopted in the study. Furthermore, the study revealed that age, emotion of worried and a specific emotion regulation strategy related to social exchange were the most accurate predictors of severe depressive symptoms. By carefully selecting predictors and utilizing appropriate sorting techniques, these findings may provide valuable supplementary information to traditional diagnostic methods and psychological assessments

Individual differences in emotion regulation: Personal tendency in strategy selection is related to implementation capacity and well-being.

Individual differences in emotion regulation (ER) are assumed to play an important role in resilience and mental health. In a standardized laboratory setting, we investigated how the individual tendency to select specific ER strategies (reappraisal vs. distraction) and the capacity to implement these strategies are related (a) to each other and (b) to trait markers of mental health in a nonclinical sample. For 159 participants, individual regulatory tendency and capacity were assessed with established experimental tasks focusing on ER selection and implementation, respectively. Trait markers of mental health were assessed with questionnaires on ER habits, trait resilience, and well-being. We observed that ER tendency and capacity were positively correlated specifically for the condition in which participants were facing negative stimuli of high intensity. Furthermore, while ER capacity was not consistently associated with trait markers of mental health, a higher tendency to choose reappraisal (as opposed to distraction) was associated with higher trait resilience and better well-being. This study is the first to provide experimental evidence that a person's tendency to select a particular ER strategy is associated with the person's capacity to implement it successfully. Moreover, based on experimental data, we confirm an association between reappraisal tendency and mental health that has previously been suggested by questionnaire studies. This points to regulatory selection as a potential target for interventions fostering resilience and mental health. In the next step, intervention studies should clarify whether the association reflects a causal influence of regulation tendency on resilience. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

The inner workings of anger: A network analysis of anger and emotion regulation.

This study aimed to investigate the interrelations between emotion regulation strategies and different types of anger using network analysis. Data were drawn from a cross-sectional sample of 538 adults (55% females; mean age = 39.8 years, SD = 12.3) seeking treatment for anger. Data were collected between March and November 2019 in Sweden. Participants completed measures of anger problems (anger expression, anger suppression, angry reactions, anger rumination, trait anger, hostility, physical aggression, and verbal aggression) and emotion regulation (cognitive reappraisal, expressive suppression, anger relaxation, and five mindfulness strategies). To determine whether distinct clusters of anger nodes would emerge, exploratory graph analysis was employed. Based on clustering of nodes, we estimated separate networks including all measures of emotion regulation. Two clusters emerged: one consisting primarily of cognitive components of anger, and another of behavioral. Across networks, anger nodes were strongly interconnected, and anger rumination and anger suppression were especially influential. Several direct links were found between specific emotion regulation strategies and cognitive components of anger, whereas most strategies were only indirectly related to angry behavior. Cognitive reappraisal showed no direct link with any of the anger nodes. Our findings reveal potential pathways by which different emotion regulation strategies may influence different types of anger, which could serve as therapeutic targets.

Attenuated maladaptive emotion processing as a potential mediator of the relationship between dispositional mindfulness and mental health

The emotion processing and regulation mechanisms by which dispositional (personality trait) mindfulness exerts its positive effects on mental health remain unclear. Here, we tested, using structural equation modeling, whether the relationship between higher dispositional mindfulness and better mental health is mediated by reduced maladaptive processing of emotional information (e.g., expressive suppression, impoverished emotional experiences, unprocessed emotions, avoidance, externalizing strategies) and associated lower negative affect, enhanced adaptive processing of emotional information (e.g., cognitive reappraisal) and associated higher positive affect, or a combination of these two emotion processing styles. Dispositional mindfulness, mental health, diverse emotional constructs with adaptive and maladaptive dimensions (including range and differentiation of emotional experiences, use of specific emotion regulation strategies, emotion processing deficits, negative affect repair strategies, negative mood regulation expectancies), and positive and negative affect were assessed using self-report measures in a non-clinical sample of 256 adults. The relationship between higher dispositional mindfulness and better mental health was found to be best explained by reduced maladaptive emotion processing styles and associated lower negative affect, rather than by enhanced adaptive emotion processing and higher positive affect. Further research should investigate whether the same mechanisms explain psychological benefits of cultivated mindfulness in people with low dispositional mindfulness and/or with mental health disorders following mindfulness skills training.

Children’s emotion regulation, behavior regulation, and mathematics achievement: A longitudinal mediation model

ABSTRACT The present study investigated direct as well as indirect relations between children’s emotion regulation (anger- and avoidant-oriented strategies), behavior regulation, and mathematics achievement in a longitudinal study during the transition from primary to secondary school in Germany. Participants were 76 primary school students attending grade four at Time 1, of whom 51 participated again as secondary school students attending grade five at Time 2, as well as children’s mothers and teachers. Anger- and avoidant-oriented emotion regulation strategies at Time 1 were negatively associated to behavior regulation at Time 2. Behavior regulation at Time 2 was positively related to mathematics achievement at Time 2. There were no direct relations between emotion regulation (anger- and avoidant-oriented strategies) at Time 1 and mathematics achievement at Time 2. However, we found significant indirect negative effects between emotion regulation (anger- and avoidant-oriented strategies) at Time 1 and mathematics achievement at Time 2 via behavior regulation at Time 1. Thus, anger- and avoidant-oriented emotion regulation at Time 1 indirectly affected mathematics achievement negatively at Time 2 via behavior regulation at Time 2. This study confirms the complex structure of self-regulatory processes and underlines the importance of specific emotion regulation strategies for mathematics achievement.

Coping with COVID: Use, factor structure, and health behavior implications of specific emotion regulation strategies during the coronavirus pandemic

AbstractThis series of studies examined U.S. individuals' use of specific emotion regulation/coping strategies during the early months of the COVID‐19 pandemic, investigated the factor structure among strategies during this universally experienced stressor, and the extent to which these factors predicted engagement in COVID‐related health‐promoting behaviors. In Study 1, participants (N = 520) rated their use of 17 strategies for coping with pandemic‐related stress during the past 24 h. Differences emerged in strategy use across demographic groups (age, race, income). Results of exploratory factor analysis suggest a factor structure grouping strategies in terms of goals beyond emotion regulation per se, rather than phases of the emotion process or a binary adaptive versus maladaptive distinction. In Study 2 (N = 264), participants reported daily on their coping strategy use and weekly on their engagement in COVID‐specific health behaviors for 22 days. Results of confirmatory factor analysis replicate the factor structure found in Study 1. Some significant associations of coping strategy use with health‐promoting behaviors were observed, but these were sporadic and largely involved baseline measures rather than predicting change over time. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

The Role of Emotional Regulation in the Relationship between Nurses’ Creative Style and Innovation Behaviors: A Cross-Sectional Study

Innovation is crucial to an effective healthcare system, and nurses are key figures in the innovation process. A potential factor behind innovation in nursing is the creative style of nurses. Creativity is an essential component of innovation. However, the relationship between creative style and innovation is complex and involves many different factors. Among them, given the nature of the nursing profession, we propose emotional regulation, or the ability to effectively manage one’s emotions. In this study, we hypothesize that two specific emotion-regulation strategies, positive reappraisal and putting into perspective, play a role in the relationship between nurses’ creative style and innovative behaviors. We tested a moderated mediation model using cross-sectional data from 187 nurses working in 3 university hospitals in Bojnord, Iran, in 2019. Our results show that positive reappraisal completely mediates the relationship between creative style and innovative behaviors, while putting into perspective moderates the relationship between positive reappraisal and innovative behaviors. These results suggest that nurses with a flair for creativity may be able to implement innovative behaviors in the workplace due to their ability to understand work-related situations and events positively. This may be especially true for nurses who can adopt alternative viewpoints. Our study discusses these findings by highlighting the importance of emotional regulation mechanisms in transforming nurses’ creativity into effective innovation. Finally, we provide suggestions for healthcare organizations to promote innovation as an added value in the healthcare environment and services provided.

Why Does It Hurt So Much? Emotion Regulation Mediates the Association between Fibromyalgia Symptoms and Psychological Distress.

While it is known that fibromyalgia patients often suffer from depression and stress symptoms, there is inconclusive evidence as to why these symptoms occur. The aim of this study is to examine the role of emotion regulation in mental health symptoms among treatment-seeking individuals with fibromyalgia. Ninety-three (93) participants (mean age = 47.25, SD = 12.4) were recruited from one of Israel's largest community healthcare providers. They were administered self-report questionnaires assessing fibromyalgia (FIQR), perceived stress (PSS), major depression (PHQ-9), and difficulties in emotion regulation (DERS). Associations were found between measures of fibromyalgia symptoms, psychological distress, and emotion regulation. Several sub-indices of emotion regulation showed significant correlations with psychological distress, with non-acceptance of emotional responses showing the strongest associations. Moreover, non-acceptance of emotion responses mediated the association between fibromyalgia symptoms and psychological distress. Our findings show that the connection between fibromyalgia symptoms and psychological distress is partially explained by difficulties in emotion regulation. Moreover, we show that specific emotion regulation strategies play a differential role in fibromyalgia patients' distress, thereby highlighting the importance of identifying unique psychotherapeutic targets. Specifically, regulating emotions through acceptance of emotional responses seems to be particularly important for fibromyalgia patients, as they cope with stigma and a lack of validation.

Heterogeneity of emotion regulation strategies in patients with alcohol use disorder during the first year of abstinence: a clustering analysis.

Studies examining the use of specific emotion regulation (ER) strategies in patients with severe alcohol use disorder (AUD) are mainly focused on intergroup comparisons to the detriment of intragroup variability. Yet, these patients are in fact characterized by emotional deficits of varying severity, and we seek to identify different patterns of ER strategies in people with AUD during their first year of abstinence. Based on the ER strategies used by a large sample of patients with AUD, we applied cluster analysis to identify the existence of subgroups using distinct patterns of adaptive and nonadaptive strategies. To characterize these groups, we compared their clinical characteristics and then their emotional regulation strategies to those of control consumers. A first cluster, representing 61% of the sample, is constituted by individuals with high adaptive strategy scores and high nonadaptive strategy scores; a second cluster, representing 39% of the sample, corresponds to individuals with low adaptive strategy scores and high nonadaptive strategy scores. The individuals in these two clusters differed in terms of anxiety level and abstinence time. Compared with control consumers, the use of nonadaptive ER strategies remained lower for the two clusters, while the use of adaptative strategies differed. Our results support the idea of considering the heterogeneity of emotional capacities in individuals with AUD during the first year of abstinence. The identification of these profiles suggests either the existence of different adaptive ER capacities at baseline or a specific recovery of adaptive strategies over this period.

Momentary emotion regulation strategy use and success: Testing the influences of emotion intensity and habitual strategy use.

Successful emotion regulation (ER) is important for a wide range of psychosocial outcomes. Specific ER strategies have been identified as being more or less likely to be successful. However, recent evidence suggests significant individual differences in the association between strategy implementation and ER success. Indeed, 2 key factors may play an important role in moderating the link between ER strategy use and ER success in the moment: (a) the intensity of the specific emotional experience, and (b) the relative frequency in using a given ER strategy. Experience-sampling across 14-days (N = 304, Mage = 19.14, % female = 87.5) was used to assess whether emotion intensity and trait ER strategy use were differentially associated with perceived regulatory success depending on which ER strategy was used. Multilevel modeling revealed that more intense emotions were associated with lower perceived success for all strategies. Additionally, habitual reappraisal predicted greater success and habitual rumination predicted lower success. We discuss the possibility that results reflected intensity-based ER strategy choices and add to the growing call to abandon the reductive labeling of ER strategies as either "adaptive" or "maladaptive." (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Anxious Brains: A Combined Data Fusion Machine Learning Approach to Predict Trait Anxiety from Morphometric Features.

Trait anxiety relates to the steady propensity to experience and report negative emotions and thoughts such as fear and worries across different situations, along with a stable perception of the environment as characterized by threatening stimuli. Previous studies have tried to investigate neuroanatomical features related to anxiety mostly using univariate analyses and thus giving rise to contrasting results. The aim of this study is to build a predictive model of individual differences in trait anxiety from brain morphometric features, by taking advantage of a combined data fusion machine learning approach to allow generalization to new cases. Additionally, we aimed to perform a network analysis to test the hypothesis that anxiety-related networks have a central role in modulating other networks not strictly associated with anxiety. Finally, we wanted to test the hypothesis that trait anxiety was associated with specific cognitive emotion regulation strategies, and whether anxiety may decrease with ageing. Structural brain images of 158 participants were first decomposed into independent covarying gray and white matter networks with a data fusion unsupervised machine learning approach (Parallel ICA). Then, supervised machine learning (decision tree) and backward regression were used to extract and test the generalizability of a predictive model of trait anxiety. Two covarying gray and white matter independent networks successfully predicted trait anxiety. The first network included mainly parietal and temporal regions such as the postcentral gyrus, the precuneus, and the middle and superior temporal gyrus, while the second network included frontal and parietal regions such as the superior and middle temporal gyrus, the anterior cingulate, and the precuneus. We also found that trait anxiety was positively associated with catastrophizing, rumination, other- and self-blame, and negatively associated with positive refocusing and reappraisal. Moreover, trait anxiety was negatively associated with age. This paper provides new insights regarding the prediction of individual differences in trait anxiety from brain and psychological features and can pave the way for future diagnostic predictive models of anxiety.

The relations between real-time use of emotion regulation strategies and anxiety and depression symptoms.

How individuals differentially implement specific emotion regulation (ER) strategies is a critical indicator of the progression of depressive and anxiety disorders. Symptoms of anxiety and depression may be associated with differences in ER, but little evidence to date had examined whether anxiety and depression were associated with individual differences in the real-time use of ER strategies. This study used ecological momentary assessment (EMA) in two samples (n = 276) of undergraduate students from a single university who were assessed for 8-10 days. Baseline surveys captured participant self-reported anxiety symptoms and depressive symptoms using the PROMIS-Anxiety scale and the PROMIS-Depression scale, respectively. We measured ER through EMA-adapted prompts from the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire (CERQ), which participants received on their internet-enabled cell phones. In pre-registered analyses, we tested the associations between anxiety symptoms with the use of discrete ER strategies in EMA using generalized estimating equations with a log-link function to account for nesting of EMA observations within participants, and further tested whether the findings generalized to depression (not pre-registered). Symptoms of anxiety and depression were associated with greater odds of using both maladaptive and adaptive ER strategy use during the EMA period, and with lower odds of reporting no strategy use. Moreover, associations were generally stronger for maladaptive than adaptive ER strategies. Anxiety and depressive symptoms are related to increased regulatory efforts overall, and results suggest that individuals with anxiety and depressive symptoms may be especially prone to use maladaptive ER strategies. Tracking ER strategies in a natural environment can further inform our understanding of how anxious and depressed individuals attempt to regulate emotions.

Parental Assistance with Emotion Regulation Moderates Link Between COVID-19 Stress and Child Mental Health

ABSTRACT Objective The COVID-19 pandemic has severely impacted children’s mental health. All children have not been affected equally, however, and whether parental emotion socialization might buffer or exacerbate the impact of COVID-19 on children’s mental health remains an important question. Method During the first peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. N = 200 parents of children ages 0–17 (52.5% female) completed questionnaires related to parental assistance with children’s emotion regulation, symptomatology, and exposure to COVID-19-related stress. Parents were 74% Non-Hispanic/Latino/a White, 13% Asian, 4.5% Hispanic/Latino/a, 4% Black/African American, 2.5% Native American, and 1.5% bi/multiracial; 0.5% of participants preferred not to state their race/ethnicity. In a series of linear regression analyses, we examined whether parental assistance with children’s execution of emotion regulation strategies – across a variety of prototypically-adaptive and -maladaptive strategies – moderates the association between children’s exposure to COVID-19-related stress and symptomatology. Results Results suggest that parental assistance with the execution of prototypically-adaptive strategies (i.e., acceptance, problem solving, behavioral disengagement) and prototypically-maladaptive strategies (i.e., suppression, rumination) may buffer or exacerbate, respectively, the impact of COVID-19-related stress on youth mental health. Conclusions Though interpretation of findings is constrained by limitations inherent in collecting data during a pandemic, results highlight the importance of supporting parents – who play a critical role of supporting children – during public health emergencies that affect family life. Interventions designed to improve child wellbeing during the ongoing pandemic may benefit from training parents to assist their children with specific emotion regulation strategies.

The late positive potential during affective picture processing: Associations with daily life emotional functioning among adolescents with anxiety disorders

Pediatric anxiety disorders are characterized by potentiated threat responses and maladaptive emotion regulation (ER). The Late Positive Potential (LPP) is a neural index of heightened attention to emotional stimuli. Anxious individuals typically exhibit a larger LPP to unpleasant stimuli, but the LPP may also be blunted to unpleasant and pleasant stimuli for those with co-morbid depression. While a larger LPP is thought to reflect greater emotional reactivity, it is unknown to what extent variation in the LPP to laboratory stimuli corresponds to daily emotional functioning. We assessed the LPP in the laboratory in response to unpleasant, pleasant, and neutral images in combination with ecological momentary assessment of emotional reactivity and regulation in daily life among youth (9–14 years old; 55 % female) with anxiety disorders (ANX, N = 130) and no psychiatric diagnoses (ND, N = 47). We tested whether LPP amplitudes to unpleasant and pleasant stimuli (vs. neutral) are greater in ANX (vs. ND) youth and whether LPP amplitudes inversely correlate with co-morbid depression symptoms. We also examined associations between the LPP and daily life emotional functioning among ANX and ND youth. We found no group-by-valence effects on LPP amplitudes. Within ANX youth, higher depression symptoms were associated with smaller LPP amplitudes to unpleasant, but not pleasant, stimuli relative to neutral stimuli. Larger LPP amplitudes to emotional (relative to neutral) stimuli were correlated with use of specific ER strategies among ANX and ND youth but not emotional reactivity. While the LPP may reflect initial emotional reactivity to laboratory stimuli, it is associated with ER behaviors, and not emotional reactivity, in daily life.