We aim to investigate how emotion (dys)regulation modulates daily associations between sadness and depression and between anger and aggression utilizing ecological momentary assessment in a community sample of 100 Italian adolescents. The first hypothesis is that if adolescents experience higher-than-usual sadness or anger on a particular day, then they also experience higher than usual depressive or aggressive symptoms, respectively. Another hypothesis is that emotion (dys)regulation will modulate these associations. Specifically, adolescents with higher anger may also have greater difficulties regulating their anger which, in turn, may led to higher aggressive symptoms. If an adolescent's sadness is higher than usual on a given day, their depressive symptoms may be more severe than usual if they also have higher than usual difficulties regulating sadness. Thus, the present study attempts to bridge a gap in existing literature by examining a) whether specific mood states (i.e., sadness and aggression) are associated with the emergence of specific psychopathology symptoms (i.e., depressive and aggressive symptoms) on a daily basis in adolescents, b) whether intervening processes (i.e., emotion regulation) modulate these associations, and c) whether such intervening processes are similar across associations between different pairs of emotions and psychopathology symptoms (i.e., sadness-depression versus anger-aggression associations).
Numerous longitudinal investigations have utilized adolescent samples to identify that sadness, experienced during one year, predicts the emergence of depression experienced months or years later, and that anger, experienced during one year, predicts the emergence of aggressive symptoms months or years later (Maciejewski et al., 2017). Such studies excellently identify between-person associations (i.e., adolescents with higher overall levels of sadness are likely to experience higher overall levels of depression), but they do not identify within-person, daily associations. For example, when an adolescent experiences higher than usual sadness on a given day, does that lead to an adolescent experiencing higher than usual depression on the same day (Bolger & Laurenceau, 2013)? Examining such within-person, daily associations is essential to understand how emotional experiences lead to the emergence of psychopathology symptoms on a daily basis, and daily diary/EMA study designs are especially well-suited for such examinations (Bolger & Laurenceau, 2013; Maciejewski et al., 2017; Silk et al., 2003).
Yet, comparatively few daily diary/EMA studies of daily associations between specific emotions and psychopathology exist (South & Miller, 2014; Ottaviani et al., 2016 in adults). Most daily diary studies that do examine such associations in adolescence do not examine discrete emotions, but instead combine multiple difficult emotions (e.g., anger, sadness, guilt, fear) into larger ¿negative affect¿ composite scores (South & Miller, 2014). Furthermore, these studies primarily examine associations between negative affect and depressive symptoms, as opposed to aggressive or other externalizing symptoms (Kovacs & Yaroslavsky, 2014; South & Miller, 2014). These studies find that higher daily negative affect is associated with greater daily depressive symptoms (Kovacs & Yaroslavsky, 2014; South & Miller, 2014). Though negative affect studies have been vitally important in jump-starting EMA work, investigators have increasingly called for daily diary investigations of associations between discrete emotions and psychopathology over adolescence (Kovacs & Yaroslavsky, 2014; Maciejewski et al., 2017). This is especially important given that a growing body of work links sadness with depression and anger with aggression in the treatment literature (e.g., Kovacs & Yaroslavsky, 2014) and that sadness and anger have shown differential courses of development over adolescence (Maciejewski et al., 2017). To our knowledge, only one study has investigated the associations between specific emotions and specific forms of psychopathology in adolescents. This study (Silk et al., 2003) utilized an EMA framework over a 7-day period with 14-year-olds and found that greater sadness was associated with greater depressive symptoms, and greater anger was associated with more problem behavior, in adolescents over the entire 7-day period (i.e., between-person effects). However, within-person, daily associations were not examined. Therefore, in the present study, we will utilize an EMA framework to examine both between- and within-person, daily associations between specific discrete emotions (i.e., sadness and anger) and the psychopathology symptoms with which they will be longitudinally linked (i.e., depressive and aggressive symptoms, respectively).
Differences Depending on Emotions Studied
Perhaps due to the widespread use of composite negative affect variables, no daily diary studies have examined associations between specific emotions (e.g., sadness or anger), specific emotion dysregulation (e.g., difficulties regulating sadness or anger), and specific psychopathology symptoms (e.g., depression or aggression; Maciejewski et al., 2017). Although the role emotion dysregulation on moderating the effect on negative emotions on subsequent tasks has frequently been reported (Panasiti et al., 2019, Ponsi et al., 2018; Ponsi et al., 2017), it is currently unknown whether emotion dysregulation always mediates or always moderates associations between daily emotions and psychopathology symptoms, or whether such mediational or moderation effects differ depending on the emotions studied. Several leading EMA researchers suspect that the role played by emotion dysregulation depends on the specific emotion-psychopathology symptom combination studied and have called for future investigations to examine this possibility (Kovacs & Yaroslavsky, 2014; Maciejewski et al., 2017; Silk et al., 2003). We will answer this call by comparing the mediating or moderating role emotion dysregulation plays in associations among adolescent daily sadness, sadness dysregulation, and depressive symptoms on the one hand, and associations among adolescent daily anger, anger dysregulation, and aggressive symptoms on the other.