EMRRGD: EMotional Reactivity and Emotion ReGulation across Development

Dealing with emotions is a challenging task that everybody needs to learn to master from an early age on. If one succeeds in managing her of his emotions successfully, this opens up a pathway to well-being and mental health. However, if one struggles to hold control over emotions, he or she runs the risk of developing emotional problems and psychopathological symptoms. Equiping individuals with a kit of efficient emotion regulation (ER) tools is a promising way to increase well-being and enhance mental health.

In the EMRRGD project, it is investigated how individual differences in emotional reactivity (conceptualized in terms of reward and punishment sensitivity) and emotion regulation (strategies and abilities) jointly influence behavior and contribute to mental health and wellbeing (or psychological problems and psychopathology).

As the basic foundation the project, I the EMRRGD framework describes how, upon encountering an emotionally relevant stimulus, emotional reactivity and both ER skills and strategies interact to activate behavior. Different possible interactions between these variables determine the risk for developing psychopathological symptoms or facilitate wellbeing and mental health.

In this project, empirical data are collected to test hypotheses that can be formulated based on the EMRRGD framework.

In one subproject (https://osf.io/tp4zb/), it is tested in young adults whether the association between Punishment Sensitivity and Internalizing Problems is mediated by ER abilities and cognitive and behavioral ER strategies.

In a second subproject (https://osf.io/gavz5), a longitudinal design tests how familial context factors (parental depression, attachment and family climate) impact the use of ER strategies (social support seeking) in children (mean age 10), and how this in turn influences resilience in adolescence (mean age 16) (adjustment to stress in times of COVID-19).