Daily Stress Encounters: Positive Emotion Upregulation and Depressive Symptoms

When it comes to coping with stress, positive emotion upregulation is of utmost importance. Positive emotions have been suggested to be an important resource during stressful times since people try to create and upregulate pleasant emotional states when feeling stressed. Accordingly, individual differences in the ability to generate and savor positive emotional states could also affect one's skills in dealing with stress. In this regard, an important factor might be depression, which is associated with impaired positive emotion regulation. To disentangle the reciprocal influence between perceived stress and positive emotion upregulation, we conducted an Ecological Momentary Assessment study (n = 92) in which we assessed participants' stress levels and use of positive upregulating strategies (attentional deployment, cognitive change, and response modulation) three times a day over 2 weeks. Results from linear mixed-effects models showed that higher levels of perceived stress at one point predicted increased use of positive upregulating strategies from this point to the next which, in turn, resulted in subsequent diminished stress levels. Interaction analyses indicated that participants with higher depressive symptoms implemented upregulating strategies to a lower extent when experiencing intense stress. Furthermore, attentional deployment was less effective in decreasing stress in individuals higher in depression, whereas the other strategies showed comparable or even higher efficacy. Overall, positive emotion upregulation might be regarded as an adaptive tool that helps cope with stress. This mechanism might be altered in people higher in depression, who specifically struggle to implement positive upregulating strategies during times of stress.