The interplay of emotion regulation, depressive symptoms, and age under a COVID-19 lockdown: Capturing emotion regulation variability, effort, and success

•Ambulatory assessment study with 322 participants during a COVID-19 lockdown.•The more depressive symptoms, the more ER within-strategy variability.•ER within-strategy variability decreases with age.•The more depressive symptoms, the more effort and less success in emotion regulation. Emotion regulation (ER) plays an important role for mental health. However, there is limited research involving ER variability as a prerequisite for adaptive ER. The present study assessed the relations between two indicators of ER variability (between- and within-strategy), depressive symptoms, perceived ER effort and success, and age. We implemented a three-week ambulatory assessment study during a nationwide lockdown in Germany during the Covid-19 pandemic (April 2020). The sample comprised 322 participants aged between 15 and 82 years (M = 28.8 years, SD = 14.0, 74.5 % female). Participants reported their daily use of ER strategies in the evening. The data were analysed with stepwise regression analyses. We found significant positive associations between within-strategy variability and depressive symptoms. Perceived ER effort was positively correlated to depressive symptoms, while perceived ER success was negatively associated with depressive symptoms. Between-strategy variability did not show a significant connection to depressive symptoms. Age was negatively associated with within-strategy variability. The findings support that day-to-day ER variability, particularly within-strategy variability, is a significant correlate of depressive symptoms across a wide age range. Our results underscore the importance of considering situational context information when analyzing the adaptiveness of specific ER patterns.