A day in the life of a college student during the COVID‐19 pandemic: An experience sampling approach to emotion regulation

COVID‐19 has contributed to unexpected stressors in daily life, and emotion regulation is an important area of research during and post‐pandemic to gain knowledge of the effect of the pandemic on emotion regulatory processes. We adopted an ecologically valid approach to collect 10 experience samplin...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being 2022-11, Vol.14 (4), p.1333-1352
Main Authors: Lohani, Monika, Dutton, Sam, Elsey, Jamie S.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Activities of daily living
affect
Affective experiences
Avoidance behavior
Catastrophic reactions
College students
COVID-19
daily stressors
Ecological momentary assessment
emotion regulation
Emotional regulation
Emotions
experience sampling methodology
Mental health
Pandemics
Problem solving
Psychological well being
Rumination
Same day
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Summary:COVID‐19 has contributed to unexpected stressors in daily life, and emotion regulation is an important area of research during and post‐pandemic to gain knowledge of the effect of the pandemic on emotion regulatory processes. We adopted an ecologically valid approach to collect 10 experience sampling events within the same day to examine how college students regulated their emotions on a typical weekday during the pandemic and the simultaneous hedonic association of these strategies on their affective experience. Several emotion regulation strategies (including acceptance, calming, reappraisal, problem solving, and social sharing) were associated with increased positivity or reduced negativity that may be better for psychological health. In contrast, other emotion regulation strategies (including rumination, experiential avoidance, catastrophizing, lack of clarity, self‐blaming, and other‐blaming) were associated with increased negativity or reduced positivity that may worsen psychological health. In these findings, self‐reported stress was a crucial contextual moderator to consider while understanding the relationship between emotion regulation strategies and experienced affect. The current study documents variability in affect in response to stressors experienced by college students even within a single day and provides a real‐world perspective on the emotion regulation strategies that were adaptive and maladaptive in the context of the COVID‐19 pandemic.
ISSN:1758-0846
1758-0854
DOI:10.1111/aphw.12337