Behaviour Research and Therapy 50 (2012) 493e501

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Behaviour Research and Therapy

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/brat

The inuence of context on the implementation of adaptive emotion

regulation strategies
Amelia Aldao*, Susan Nolen-Hoeksema
Department of Psychology, Yale University, 2 Hillhouse Ave., New Haven, CT 06520, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Putatively adaptive emotion regulation strategies (e.g., acceptance, problem solving, reappraisal) show
Received 24 January 2012 weaker associations with psychopathology than putatively maladaptive strategies (e.g., avoidance, self-
Received in revised form criticism, hiding expression, suppression of experience, worry, rumination). This is puzzling, given the
31 March 2012
central role that adaptive strategies play in a wide range of psychotherapeutic approaches. We explored
Accepted 18 April 2012
this asymmetry by examining the effects of context (i.e., emotion intensity, type of emotion, social vs.
academic circumstances) on the implementation of adaptive and maladaptive strategies. We asked 111
Keywords:
participants to describe 8 emotion-eliciting situations and identify which strategies they used in order to
Emotion regulation strategies
Adaptive strategies
regulate their affect. We found support for a contextual model of emotion regulation, in which adaptive
Maladaptive strategies strategies were implemented with more cross-situational variability than maladaptive strategies. In
Contextual factors addition, the variability in implementation of two adaptive strategies (acceptance, problem solving)
predicted lower levels of psychopathology, suggesting that exible implementation of such strategies in
line with contextual demands is associated with better mental health. We discuss these ndings by
underscoring the importance of adopting a functional approach to the delineation of contextual factors
that inuence the implementation of emotion regulation strategies.
2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Background Sloan, 2010). Specic emotion regulation strategies have been

Emotion regulation, which has been conceptualized as the
process by which individuals modify their emotions or the situa-
tions eliciting emotions in order to respond appropriately to envi-
ronmental demands (Gross, 1998), is a transdiagnostic factor
associated with a range of types of psychopathology (e.g., Aldao &
Nolen-Hoeksema, 2010, 2011; Aldao, Nolen-Hoeksema, & Schwe-
izer, 2010; Harvey, Watkins, Mansell, & Shafran, 2004; Kring &
* Corresponding author. Tel.: 1 212 821 0773.
E-mail addresses: amelia.aldao@yale.edu (A. Aldao), susan.nolen-hoeksema@
yale.edu (S. Nolen-Hoeksema).
1
Although a useful heuristic given the available empirical evidence, conceptu-
alizing strategies as adaptive or maladaptive can be considered the functional
equivalent of labeling an emotion like anxiety as bad and an emotion like
happiness as good. Not only does this notion seem bizarre to anyone who has
ever noticed the motivating function of anxiety or gotten too carried away by
a state of happiness, but it is also in direct contradiction with the conceptual
underpinnings of the emotion regulation framework, which underscores the
importance of evaluating the effectiveness of strategies in relation to the particular
context in which they are implemented (unfortunately, this is rarely reected in
study designs). In this investigation, we propose a rst step in the departure from
such problematic nomenclature by conducting a systematic modeling of the
inuences of contextual factors on the implementation of strategies.
argued to be either adaptive or maladaptive based on their
immediate effects on affect, behavior, and cognition, as well as on
their relationships to psychopathology (see reviews in Aldao et al.,
2010; Gross, 1998; Kring & Sloan, 2010; Nolen-Hoeksema &
Watkins, 2011).1
Putatively maladaptive strategies, such as avoidance of
emotions and/or situations, hiding or suppressing the expression or
experience of emotions, worrying or ruminating, and self-criticism,
have been found to produce detrimental outcomes in experimental
studies, including rebounds in negative affect following exposure to
emotion-eliciting stimuli (e.g., Campbell-Sills, Barlow, Brown, &
Hofmann, 2006), increases (and rebounds) in sympathetic activa-
tion (e.g., Gross, 1998; Gross & Levenson, 1993; Wegner, Broome, &
Blumberg, 1997), diminished autonomic exibility (e.g., Hofmann
et al., 2005), memory difculties (e.g., Richards, Butler, & Gross,
2003), and declines in instrumental behavior and social support
(e.g., Nolen-Hoeksema, Wisco, & Lyubomirsky, 2008). Moreover,
self-reports of the use of these strategies have been associated with
the development and maintenance of a wide range of mental
disorders, including depression (e.g., Nolen-Hoeksema et al., 2008),
anxiety disorders (e.g., Mennin, Holaway, Fresco, Moore, &
Heimberg, 2007; Salters-Pedneault, Roemer, Tull, Rucker, &
Mennin, 2006; Werner, Goldin, Ball, Heimberg, & Gross, 2011),

0005-7967/$ e see front matter 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.brat.2012.04.004
494 A. Aldao, S. Nolen-Hoeksema / Behaviour Research and Therapy 50 (2012) 493e501
eating disorders (e.g., Evers, Stok, & de Ridder, 2010; Nolen-
Hoeksema, Stice, Wade, & Bohon, 2007), and borderline person-
ality disorder (e.g., Dixon-Gordon, Chapman, Lovasz, & Walters,
2011; Lynch, Trost, Salsman, & Linehan, 2007; Neasciu, Rizvi, &
Linehan, 2010).
Conversely, putatively adaptive strategies, such as acceptance,
problem solving, and cognitive reappraisal (i.e., thinking differently
about a situation in order to downregulate the amount of emotion
felt; Gross, 1998) have been shown in experimental studies to lead
to benecial outcomes, including reductions in the experience of
negative affect (e.g., Goldin, McRae, Rame, & Gross, 2007),
increased pain tolerance (e.g., Hayes, Bissett, et al., 1999), effective
interpersonal functioning (e.g., Richards & Gross, 2000), and
diminished cardiac reactivity (e.g., Campbell-Sills et al., 2006). In
self-report studies, they have also been associated with low levels
of symptoms of psychopathology (e.g., Aldao et al., 2010). Thus,
adaptive and maladaptive regulation strategies have been associ-
ated with symptoms of psychopathology, albeit in different
directions.
Notably, the putatively maladaptive strategies have shown
a larger magnitude in their relationship to psychopathology than
adaptive strategies (e.g., Aldao & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2010, 2011;
Aldao et al., 2010). The weak inverse association between adaptive
strategies and psychopathology is particularly noteworthy, as
adaptive strategies are important components of a variety of
treatment modalities, ranging from traditional CBT to newer, third-
wave approaches (e.g., Beck, 1976; Hayes, 2008; Hofmann &
Asmundson, 2008; Linehan, 1993; Roemer, Orsillo, & Salters-
Pedeneault, 2008; Segal, Williams, & Teasdale, 2001).
A contextual approach
One potential explanation for this weaker predictive power of
adaptive strategies is that their effective implementation might be
more susceptible to contextual demands. In other words, whereas
maladaptive strategies, such as avoidance or rumination, may
produce detrimental outcomes in most contexts in which they are
implemented (e.g., Hayes, Bissett, et al., 1999; Nolen-Hoeksema
et al., 2008), putatively adaptive strategies might in fact lead to
desirable outcomes only when deployed in the appropriate context
(Aldao & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2010, 2011; Aldao et al., 2010). Indeed,
in the study of emotion regulation and psychopathology, there has
been an emerging interest in the importance of exibility in
implementing strategies that match contextual demands as key to
psychological health (e.g., Bonanno, Pat-Horenczyk, & Noll, 2011;
Cheng, 2001; Kashdan & Rottenberg, 2010). Bonanno and
colleagues have shown that expressive exibility, that is, the ability
to exibly enhance or suppress emotional expression, predicts long
term adjustment (Bonanno, Papa, Lalande, Westphal, & Coifman,
2004), protects against the deleterious effects of cumulative life
stress (Westphal, Seivert, & Bonanno, 2010), and is negatively
associated with complicated grief (Gupta & Bonanno, 2011). Simi-
larly, Rottenberg and colleagues (Rottenberg, Gross, & Gotlib, 2005)
have shown that depression is characterized by emotion context
insensitivity, that is, valence-independent blunted emotional
reactivity. Conversely, context sensitivity when describing negative
emotions regarding a recent loss has been associated with fewer
depressive symptoms prospectively (Coifman & Bonanno, 2010)
and exible emotional responsiveness to a wide range of stimuli
has been shown to predict resiliency (Waugh, Thompson, & Gotlib,
2011). Relatedly, symptoms of depression have been associated
with the inexible implementation of experiential avoidance
(Shahar & Herr, 2011), a strategy conceptualized as functionally
inverse to acceptance (e.g., Hayes, Strosahl, & Wilson, 1999). From
a treatment standpoint, Hayes, Strosahl et al. (1999) have
incorporated the framework of functional contextualism and
psychological exibility into their treatment approach, Acceptance
and Commitment Therapy (ACT).
Current investigation
Despite much recent interest in the inuence of context on the
adaptiveness of emotion regulation, most of the work has narrowly
focused on two methodological approaches: administration of trait
self-report measures of emotion regulation and/or emotion
inductions in controlled laboratory settings (c.f., a handful of
experience sampling studies, e.g., Moberly & Watkins, 2008).
Therefore, very little is known about the process by which indi-
viduals spontaneously implement strategies in response to natu-
rally uctuating contexts. To address this limitation, we developed
a new approach to assess the implementation of emotion regula-
tion strategies across varying contexts. We asked participants to
retrospectively identify 24 situations over the past two weeks that
varied in the type of emotion they elicited (i.e., anger, anxiety,
happiness, sadness), their intensity (i.e., low, medium, high), and
the circumstances (i.e., social, achievement). We included happi-
ness, given recent theoretical and empirical work underscoring the
potential deleterious effects of positive affect (e.g., Mauss, Tamir,
Anderson, & Savino, 2011) and the subsequent need for its regu-
lation. We then asked participants to rate the extent to which they
implemented specic emotion regulation strategies in response to
each of the events. In line with a transdiagnostic model of emotion
regulation (e.g., Aldao & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2010; Aldao et al., 2010;
Harvey et al., 2004; Kring & Sloan, 2010), we assessed for symptoms
of a wide range of disorders, namely, depression, anxiety, eating
pathologies, and borderline personality features.
In addition, the study of emotion regulation strategies and
exibility has been characterized by comparisons between a small
and narrow range of strategies (most often reappraisal and
expressive suppression; c.f., Hofmann, Heering, Sawyer, & Asnaani,
2009 examined three). Therefore, in this investigation, we simul-
taneously examined the implementation of 7 emotion regulation
strategies: acceptance, problem solving, and reappraisal (i.e.,
adaptive strategies) and self-criticism, hiding expressions of
emotions, suppressing experience of emotions, and worry/rumi-
nation (i.e., maladaptive).
We tested the following hypotheses. First, we examined
whether putatively adaptive strategies would be implemented to
a greater or lesser extent than putatively maladaptive strategies.
Second, we predicted that the implementation of adaptive strate-
gies would show more variability across situations than that of
maladaptive strategies, supporting the notion that the imple-
mentation of adaptive strategies is more context-dependent than
that of maladaptive strategies. Third, we predicted that, in line with
the literature on the importance of exibility for well-being (e.g.,
Bonanno, Papa, ONeill, Westphal, & Coifman, 2004; Hayes,
Strosahl, et al., 1999; Rottenberg et al., 2005) the variability in the
implementation of strategies, particularly adaptive strategies,
would add to the prediction of psychopathology above their mere
implementation.
Method
Participants
Recruitment
Participants were recruited using Amazons Mechanical Turk
(mTurk.com), an internet-based platform that allows one to request
jobs, such as survey completions, from participants seeking
monetary compensation. mTurk.com facilitates high quality data
 A. Aldao, S. Nolen-Hoeksema / Behaviour Research and Therapy 50 (2012) 493e501
collection from a large pool of diverse participants by allowing job
requesters to reject participants work if they do not follow
instructions. Participants have been shown to be highly motivated
to complete the tasks, even when they were offered only a few
cents for several minutes of work (e.g., Buhrmester, Kwang, &
Gosling, 2011; Mason & Suri, 2010) and a recent study has shown
that mTurk participants performed similarly to participants
recruited ofine in tasks related to heuristics and biases (Paolacci,
Chanlder, & Ipeirotis, 2010). For the purposes of this investigation,
we limited the sample to individuals over the age of 18 located in
the United States. We carefully examined the data and excluded 8
participants who had made mistakes and/or reported not having
understood the instructions. The study was approved by our IRB;
participants were required to provide electronic consent and were
debriefed and paid in full ($7 for an hour).
Demographics
Participants were 111 adults between the ages of 18 and 68
(mean age 36.10, SD 13.29); 71% identied as female.2 They
were allowed to identify more than one ethnic group. A majority of
the sample identied as Caucasian (N 86), and the rest identied
as Asian American (N 13), African American (N 9), Hispanic/
Latino (N 4), Native American (N 4) or Other (N 2).
Contextual emotion regulation assessment
Describing emotion-eliciting situations
Participants were rst instructed to read brief educational
materials describing the process of emotion regulation, particularly
the difference between having an emotion and the process of
regulating it. They were then asked to identify and describe a total
of 24 distinct situations over the past 2 weeks that elicited four
types of emotions (i.e., anxiety, anger, sadness, happiness) in three
types of intensity (i.e., low, moderate, high) and elicited in two
types of circumstances (i.e., social, achievement-related). They did
so by typing in text in a text box matrix in Qualtrics.
Situational implementation of strategies
Following the identication and description of the 24 situations,
the Qualtrics survey presented back to participants a total of 8
situations chosen semi-randomly so that for each combination of
the four emotion types (i.e., anxiety, anger, sadness, happiness) and
two of the emotion intensities (i.e., moderate, high), participants
would be randomly asked to answer questions about a social- or
achievement-related situation. Participants were only asked about
those situations eliciting moderate and high levels of intensity,
since those characterized by low emotional intensity would require
little to no regulatory effort. Participants saw the exact text from
2
Given recent interest in the relationship between emotion regulation and age
and gender (e.g., Isaacowitz & Blanchard-Fields, 2012; Nolen-Hoeksema & Aldao,
2011), we examined the relationship between these two variables and the imple-
mentation of regulation strategies and their variability. We found that age was
positively correlated with the extent to which all 7 strategies were implemented. It
was also positively correlated with the variability in the implementation of problem
solving. We also re-ran the regression analyses predicting symptoms with imple-
mentation and variability of strategies (and their interaction) and included age in
the rst step. We found age to be a non-signicant predictor and its inclusion in the
models did not alter the relationships reported in the original manuscript. The only
exception was that it was a signicant predictor of psychopathology in the models
including self-criticism and worry/rumination as predictors - and it allowed the
marginal coefcient for the implementation of worry/rumination to reach statis-
tical signicance (t[107] 2.89, p < .05, b .35). On the other hand, gender was not
a predictor of implementation or variability of strategies, with the one exception
being that women reported using worry/rumination to a greater extent than men.
495
the situation they described in the text boxes and were asked to
rate the extent to which they implemented each of 7 emotion
regulation strategies on a scale from 1 Not at all to 4 A lot. Three
of the strategies could be conceptualized as adaptive (i.e., accep-
tance, problem solving, and reappraisal) and four as maladaptive
(i.e., self-criticism, hiding expressions of emotions, suppressing
experience of emotions, and worry/rumination). In order to ensure
that participants had a good understanding of each strategy, we
provided them with brief descriptions of the behavioral repertoires
that correspond to the way in which each strategy is commonly
conceptualized in the literature. Specically, we described accep-
tance as allow or accept your feelings, problem solving as come
up with ideas to change the situation or x the problem, cognitive
reappraisal as think of the situation differently in order to change
how you felt, self-criticism as criticize yourself for your feelings,
hiding expressions as hide your feelings from others, experiential
suppression as push down your feelings or put them out of your
mind, and worry/rumination as worry or ruminate about the
situation. We calculated the internal reliability for each strategy
across the 8 situations and, in line with our hypothesis that adap-
tive strategies would show lower cross-situational consistency than
the maladaptive strategies, we found as for these adaptive strate-
gies to be lower than those for maladaptive strategies (e.g.,
acceptance a .75; problem solving, a .56; cognitive reappraisal,
a .58; self-criticism, a .80; hiding expressions, a .78; sup-
pressing experience, a .67; and worry/rumination, a .78).
Symptom measures
Mood and Anxiety Symptom Questionnaire Short Form (MASQ-SF;
Watson & Clark, 1991)
It is a 62-item measure that assesses symptoms that commonly
occur in anxiety and mood disorders. Items are rated on a 5-point
scale. We administered the Anxious Arousal (AA) subscale, which
consists of 17 items that assess anxiety-specic symptoms (e.g.,
startled easily) and the Anhedonic Depression (AD) subscale,
which consists of 22 items that assess symptoms specic to
depression (e.g., felt withdrawn from other people). As per IRB
requirements, we did not include the item assessing for suicidal
ideation. Watson et al. (1995) reported high levels of internal
consistency in multiple samples (as in our sample for AA and AD
were .92 and .96, respectively).
McLean Screening Instrument for Borderline Personality Disorder
(MSI-BPD; Zanarini et al., 2003)
It is a 10-item measure assessing symptoms of borderline
personality disorder (e.g., Have you chronically felt empty?) rated
on a yes/no format. As per IRB requirements, we did not include the
item assessing for deliberate self-harm. This measure has shown
good sensitivity and specicity (above .90; Zanarini et al., 2003) and
good internal consistency (a .74; in this sample, a 82).
Eating Attitudes Test e 26 (EAT-26, Garner, Olmsted, Bohr, &
Garnkle, 1982)
It is a 26-item measure that measures dysfunctional eating
attitudes and behaviors (e.g., I nd myself preoccupied with food)
and captures symptoms of eating disorders (Garner et al., 1982).
Items are rated on a 6-point scale and higher scores. A total score of
20 or greater has been identied as indicative of problematic
eating. The EAT-26 has exhibited good internal reliability (a 83 to
.90 Garner et al., 1982; in this sample, a .83).
Psychopathology composite score
We standardized the symptom measures (MASQ AD, MASQ AA,
MSI, and EAT-26; see Table 1 for descriptives) and averaged the
496 A. Aldao, S. Nolen-Hoeksema / Behaviour Research and Therapy 50 (2012) 493e501

Table 1 Table 3
Descriptives for symptom measures. Means for the implementation and variability of implementation of each strategy.

Symptoms Mean (SD) MineMax Skewness (SE) Strategy Implementation Variability

MASQ AA 1.53 (.59) 1e3.76 1.64 (.23) Acceptance 2.33 1.02
MASQ AD 2.91 (.86) 1.10e4.90 .16 (.23) Problem solving 1.90 1.01
EAT 9.87 (10.16) 0e48 1.75 (.23) Reappraisal 1.70 .87
MSI-BPD 3.14 (2.70) 0e9 .58 (.23) Self-criticism 1.46 .60
Symptoms composite 0 (.77) 1.26e2.14 .86 (.23) Hiding expressions 1.67 .76
Symptoms composite SQRT 0 (.35) .08e1.85 .08 (.23) Suppressing experience 1.65 .80
Worry/rumination 1.78 .85

standardized scores into a composite measure of symptoms of

psychopathology. Because this measure was skewed (skewness: .86,
SE: .23, ratio > 2), we transformed it by calculating its square root,
which resulted in a normal distribution (skewness: .08; SE: .23,
ratio < 2).
Results
Differences in implementation of adaptive and maladaptive
strategies by situation
We examined whether adaptive strategies were implemented to
a greater extent than maladaptive strategies in some situations
more than others. To do this, we rst calculated multiple indices
reecting the average implementation of each strategy across each
of the dimensions of interest: 1) intensity, consisting of moderate
and high; 2) circumstance, comprised of social and achievement;
and 3) valence, resulting in scores for negative affect (average of
anxiety, anger, and sadness) and happiness. For each of these
dimensions, we averaged the implementation of acceptance,
problem solving, and cognitive reappraisal into a composite score
of implementation of adaptive strategies and the implementation
of hiding feelings from others, self-criticism, suppressing experi-
ence of emotions, and worry/rumination into a composite score of
implementation of maladaptive strategies. As Table 2 shows,
adaptive strategies were implemented to a greater extent than
maladaptive strategies in high intensity situations, t[108] 5.34,
p < .01, moderate intensity situations, t[109] 7.22, p < .01,
achievement situations, t[111] 6.57, p < .01, social situations,
t[108] 6.46, p < .01, negative situations, t[111] 4.82, p < .01, and
happy situations, t[108] 10.82, p < .01.
Implementation of specic strategies across situations
For the next set of analyses, we averaged the extent to which
each strategy was implemented across all of the situations. We then
examined differences among the implementation of each strategy
by conducting a repeated measures MANOVA. The omnibus test
was signicant, Wilks l .40, F [6, 105] 26.237, p < .001,
h2p :60. We followed-up with Bonferroni adjusted post-hoc
comparisons. See Table 3 for mean scores.
Table 2
Means and standard deviations for the implementation of adaptive and maladaptive
strategies in each type of situation.
Type of situation Adaptive strategies Maladaptive strategies
Moderate intensity 1.98 (.55)** 1.60
High intensity 1.97 (.56)** 1.67
Negative 2.02 (.56)** 1.78
Happy 1.86 (.53)** 1.22
Social 1.97 (.53)** 1.64
Achievement 1.97 (.56)** 1.63
Note: adaptive strategies are implemented to a greater extent than maladaptive
strategies.
**p < .01.
Adaptive strategies
Acceptance was implemented to a greater extent across situa-
tions than any other strategy, namely, problem solving (mean
difference .44, p < 01), reappraisal (mean difference .64, p < .01),
self-criticism (mean difference .87, p < .01), hiding expressions
(mean difference .67, p < .01), suppression of experience
(mean difference .68, p < .01), and worry/rumination (mean
difference .55, p < .01). Similarly, problem solving was imple-
mented to a greater extent than reappraisal (mean difference .19,
p < .01), self-criticism (mean difference .44, p < 01), hiding
expressions (mean difference .23, p < .01), and suppression of
experience (mean difference .25, p < .01); however, it did not
differ from worry/rumination (mean difference .12, ns). Reap-
praisal was implemented only to a greater extent than self-criticism
(mean difference .24, p < .01).
Maladaptive strategies
Self-criticism was implemented to a lesser extent than the other
maladaptive strategies, namely hiding expressions (mean difference
.21, p < .01), suppression of experience (mean difference .19,
p < .05), and worry/rumination (mean difference .32, p < .01).
The rest of the maladaptive strategies did not signicantly differ from
each other in their implementation; also, as mentioned in the para-
graph above, they were implemented to a lesser extent than the
adaptive strategies.
Variability in implementation of strategies across situations
In addition to averaging the implementation of each strategy
across situations, we also calculated their standard deviations (SD).
Higher SDs reect more cross-situational variability in the imple-
mentation of the strategy (see Moore & Fresco, 2007). We examined
whether there would be differences among the variability of
implementation (across situations) of each of the 7 emotion regu-
lation strategies by conducting in a repeated measures MANOVA.
The omnibus test was signicant, Wilks l .59, F [6, 105] 12.23,
p < .001, h2p :41. We followed-up with Bonferroni adjusted post-
hoc comparisons. See Table 3 for mean scores.
Adaptive strategies
Acceptance had higher variability in its implementation across
situations than reappraisal (mean difference .14, p < .05), and,
more importantly, than the maladaptive strategies, namely, self-
criticism (mean difference .42, p <. 01), hiding expressions
(mean difference .25, p < .01), and suppression of experience
(.50)** (mean difference .21, p <. 01). Variability in the implementation of
(.62)** acceptance was also marginally higher than that for worry/rumi-
(.59)**
nation (mean difference .16, p .06). The implementation of
(.47)**
(.54)** problem solving also had higher variability than that of reappraisal
(.59)** (mean difference .14, p < .05), and that of the maladaptive strat-
egies, including self-criticism (mean difference .42, p < .01),
hiding expressions (mean difference .25, p < .01), suppression of
experience (mean difference .21, p < .01), and worry/rumination
 A. Aldao, S. Nolen-Hoeksema / Behaviour Research and Therapy 50 (2012) 493e501
(mean difference .16, p < .05). The implementation of reappraisal
only had higher variability than that of self-criticism (mean
difference .28, p < .01).
Maladaptive strategies
Self-criticism had the lowest cross-situational variability in its
implementation, being signicantly lower than hiding expressions
(mean difference .17, p < .01), suppression of experience (mean
difference .21, p < .01) and worry/rumination (mean
difference .26, p < 01). In contrast, the remaining three mal-
adaptive strategies did not differ from one another in the cross-
situational variability of their implementation, and, as mentioned
in the paragraph above, they were implemented with lower vari-
ability than the adaptive strategies.
Predicting psychopathology with implementation and variability
We predicted the psychopathology composite score with
implementation and variability of implementation of each strategy
in a separate regression analysis (see Table 4 for bivariate correla-
tions). In a second step, we entered the interaction between
implementation and its variability. We centered variables in order
to reduce multicollinearity (Tabachnick & Fidell, 2007).
Adaptive strategies
Acceptance. In line with predictions, both the implementation
and its variability negatively predicted psychopathology,
t[108] 2.49, p < .01, b .22; t[108] 2.90, p < .01; b .26;
respectively. The interaction between implementation and its
variability was marginally signicant, t[108] 1.77, p .08, b .17.
Problem solving. Surprisingly, the implementation of problem-
solving positively predicted psychopathology, t[108] 1.95,
p .05, b .24, and, in line with predictions, the variability of its
implementation negatively predicted symptoms, t[108] - 4.01,
p < .01, b .50. The interaction between these two variables was
not signicant, t[107] .80, ns, b .08. As Table 4 shows, the
bivariate correlation between implementation of problem solving
and psychopathology was not signicant, suggesting that its
signicant positive coefcient in the regression analysis including
variability might be the result of a suppression effect. We will
return to this point later on in the discussion section.
Reappraisal. Also, contrary to predictions, neither the imple-
mentation, the variability of implementation, nor the interaction
between these two variables was a predictor of symptoms,
t[108] .61, ns, b .09; t[108] .18, ns, b .03; t[107] 1.46,
ns, b .15, respectively.
Maladaptive strategies
As hypothesized, it was mostly the implementation of malad-
aptive strategies (and not the variability of implementation) that
predicted psychopathology (positively).
Table 4
Bivariate correlations between symptoms of psychopathology and implementation
and variability of implementation of each strategy.
Strategy Implementation
Acceptance .24**
Problem solving .10
Reappraisal .11
Self-criticism .29**
Hiding expressions .18
Suppressing experience .04
Worry/rumination .21*
**p < .01, *p < .05.
497
Self-criticism. The implementation of self-criticism was a signi-
cant positive predictor of psychopathology, t[108] 2.81, p < .01,
b .33. Neither its variability nor the interaction between its
implementation and its variability were signicant predictors of
symptoms, t[108] .51, ns, b .06, t[107] .51, ns, b .50,
ns, respectively.
Hiding expressions. Interestingly, there was no main effect of the
implementation of hiding expressions or its variability in the
prediction of symptoms, t[108] 1.22, ns, b .15; t[108] .52, ns,
b .06, respectively; however, there was a signicant interaction
between them, t[107] 2.55, p < .05, b .24. We followed-up
such interaction with simple slopes (Aiken & West, 1991). We
examined the moderating effects of variability of implementation
on the relationship between implementation and psychopathology
by evaluating implementation of hiding expressions as a predictor
of psychopathology at high and low levels of variability of imple-
mentation (i.e., 1  SD above/below the mean). Participants
who implemented this strategy with low variability showed an
association between implementation and symptoms, such that
higher implementation was associated with higher symptoms,
t[107] 2.42, p < .05, b .33. Conversely, when individuals
implemented this strategy with high variability, the extent of its
implementation was not associated with symptoms, t[107] .97,
ns, b .16. See Fig. 1.
Suppression of experience. Neither the implementation of
suppression of experience, its variability, nor their interaction were
signicant predictors of psychopathology, t[108] .03, ns,
b .01; t[108] .48, ns, b .06, and t[107] .47, ns, b .05,
respectively.
Worry/rumination
Its implementation was a marginal predictor of psychopa-
thology, t[108] 1.76, p .08, b .20, but neither its variability nor
its interaction with implementation were signicant predictors,
t[108] .15, ns, b .02, t[107] 1.45, ns, b .14, respectively.
Discussion
In previous research, we have found that putatively adaptive
emotion regulation strategies are less strongly correlated with
psychopathology than putatively maladaptive emotion regulation
strategies (e.g., Aldao & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2010, 2011). Indeed, the
meta-analysis by Aldao et al. (2010) found that the putatively
adaptive strategies generally had weak negative associations with
psychopathology, while the putatively maladaptive strategies
generally had robust positive associations with psychopathology.
1.7
1.5
Psychopathology
1.3
1.1
Variability
.28* 0.9
.34**
.10 Low Variability
0.7
.15
High Variability
.15
0.5
.06
.06
Low Implementation High Implementation
Fig. 1. Interaction between implementation and variability of hiding expressions.
498 A. Aldao, S. Nolen-Hoeksema / Behaviour Research and Therapy 50 (2012) 493e501
We have argued that this pattern might emerge because the
implementation and effects of adaptive strategies might be more
context-dependent than the effects of maladaptive strategies.
The present study provides support for this argument. In
general, the adaptive strategies were implemented to a greater
extent than the maladaptive strategies across a variety of situations.
Yet, there was greater cross-situational variability in the imple-
mentation of adaptive strategies than in the implementation of
maladaptive strategies. Most importantly, this greater variability in
the implementation of two of the adaptive strategies (acceptance
and problem-solving) predicted lower levels of psychopathology.
These ndings suggest that the more variable implementation of
adaptive strategies might be a function of a exible assessment of
contextual variation rather than of a haphazard processes in which
individuals unsystematically try to implement various adaptive
strategies to see which one sticks. Therefore, they provide
support for exibility models of emotion regulation (e.g., Bonano
et al., 2004; Hayes, Strosahl et al., 1999), at least in regards to
adaptive emotion regulation strategies. On the other hand, whereas
greater implementation of maladaptive strategies was generally
related to more psychopathology, variability in their implementa-
tion was not. This suggests that (a) people consistently do or do not
use maladaptive regulation strategies by implementing them to
comparable extents across situations and (b) individuals who use
maladaptive strategies more often have higher levels of psycho-
pathology. Future work should seek to identify processes by which
maladaptive strategies could also be implemented with contextual
exibility. Of particular importance will be the evaluation of
attentional processes that might allow individuals to disengage
from rigid patterns of regulation (e.g., Joormann, Levens, & Gotlib,
2011).
Among all the strategies, acceptance was the most often used,
but also the most variably implemented across contexts. Both
greater implementation and variability of implementation of
acceptance were related to less psychopathology. These ndings
are in line with the framework by Hayes, Strosahl et al. (1999), in
which they argue that acceptance is a critical step in effectively
regulating emotions in many situations, but it should be imple-
mented exibly, in a way that is contextually appropriate for the
particular situation an individual faces.
Among the adaptive strategies, reappraisal was the least
frequently implemented. Moreover, neither its implementation nor
the variability of its implementation was associated with psycho-
pathology. The lack of association between the use of reappraisal
and psychopathology ts previous ndings that trait measures of
reappraisal are only weakly associated with psychopathology
(Aldao et al., 2010), but is nonetheless surprising given consistent
associations between experimental inductions of reappraisal and
downregulation of negative affect (e.g., Goldin, McRae, Ramel, &
Gross, 2007; Gross, 1998). One potential explanation for these
discrepancies across studies is that cognitive reappraisal might be
a multi-faced regulation strategy and as such, the effects of its
implementation might be best captured by examining its sub
processes separately (see McRae, Ciesielski, & Gross, 2011).
Specically, researchers have questioned whether meaning
changing and/or attentional redeployment are the effective
elements of reappraisal (Urry, 2010; Van Reekum, et al., 2007). It
will be important for future investigations to adopt a functional
behavioral approach to delineate the specic processes by which
individuals implement this e and other e strategies.
There was an unexpected positive association between the
extent of implementation of problem solving and psychopathology.
Conceptually, it is possible that, similarly to reappraisal, problem
solving might encompass various sub processes, some of which
might involve worrying and rumination (e.g., Borkovec & Roemer,
1995). Indeed, our ndings suggest that problem solving was
implemented to a similar extent as worry/rumination. Relatedly, it
might be the case that participants had more difculties imple-
menting problem solving, and therefore it failed to regulate the
associated emotional states. Additionally, it is feasible that problem
solving has a positive association with psychopathology because
people with psychopathology encounter more stressors and
therefore have more problems to solve. We also note that the
bivariate correlation between implementation of problem solving
and psychopathology was non-signicant; we therefore suggest
that its unexpected direction in the regression analysis might be
the result of a suppression variable effect. In either case, we would
like to once again highlight the necessity of future work conducting
functional assessment of strategies to delineate the sub processes
involved in their implementation.
We also observed that maladaptive strategies were implemented
to a lesser extent than adaptive strategies. This effect was particu-
larly strong for self-criticism, which had the lowest implementation
and variability scores of any strategy, adaptive or maladaptive. Still,
people who used self-criticism or hiding the expression of feelings
had signicantly higher levels of psychopathology. In addition, the
regression analyses for hiding the expression of feelings suggested
that it was only those people who rigidly hid their feelings across
contexts who had positive associations between the implementa-
tion of this strategy and psychopathology. This pattern is consistent
with the work by Bonanno et al. (Bonanno et al., 2004; Gupta &
Bonanno, 2011; Westphal et al., 2010), suggesting that the inex-
ible use of expressive suppression is associated with difculties with
adjustment to stressors and elevated psychopathology.
One putatively maladaptive strategy that was not related to
psychopathology was experiential suppression. This is perhaps
surprising, given the substantial amount of empirical work sug-
gesting the association between experiential avoidance and
symptoms of psychopathology (see Aldao et al., 2010; Hayes,
Strosahl et al., 1999). Future work should seek to further delineate
the mechanisms underlying the suppression versus the avoidance
of internal states. In addition, we were surprised to nd that the
relationship between the implementation of worry/rumination and
psychopathology was marginally signicant in the regression
analysis, given evidence from many previous studies that worry/
rumination are robust predictors of psychopathology (see the
meta-analysis by Aldao et al., 2010). This might have been the
result of low power, given that, at the univariate level,
this variable showed the expected positive association with
psychopathology (see Table 4). In addition, it was a signicant
predictor in a regression model with an untransformed symptoms
variable (t[108] 1.97, p .05, b .23) and in a model in which age
was entered in the rst step t[107] 2.89, p < .05, b .35). It will be
important for replications of this work to recruit larger samples
with more variability in the severity of their symptom proles.
Clinically, our pattern of ndings suggests that interventions to
improve emotion regulation strategies would benet from a func-
tional analysis (e.g., Linehan, 1993) of the contexts in which indi-
viduals who have particular problems effectively implement
potentially adaptive strategies such as reappraisal, problem solving,
and acceptance. In this respect, we propose that rather than seeking
to replace maladaptive strategies for adaptive strategies, emotion
regulation interventions should focus on helping individuals
develop an awareness of the features of contexts that inuence
their use of strategies, and learn to implement strategies exibly
and appropriately for the context. This approach is consistent with
the concept of developing a mindful awareness (e.g., Kabat-Zinn,
1990; Linehan, 1993; Roemer et al., 2008; Segal et al., 2001) and
with the framework of functional contextualism and psychological
exibility that is at the core of ACT (Hayes, Strosahl, et al., 1999).
 A. Aldao, S. Nolen-Hoeksema / Behaviour Research and Therapy 50 (2012) 493e501
From a methodological standpoint, this investigation consti-
tuted a much-needed departure from the usual way of assessing for
the implementation of emotion regulation strategies, which
consists of the administration of self-report questionnaires
assessing trait level process. Instead, we adopted an idiographic
approach, asking individuals to identify their implementation of
emotion regulation strategies in relation to specic emotional
events that they identied as having experienced over the past two
weeks. This approach allowed us to examine contextual variations
in the implementation of strategies, which is an understudied area,
despite recent interest in the role of context in affective processes
(e.g., Bonanno et al., 2004; Hayes, Strosahl et al., 1999; Kashdan &
Rottenberg, 2010; Rottenberg et al., 2005). We focused on vari-
ability across situations varying in the intensity of emotions, their
valence, and the type of circumstance. It will be particularly
important for future investigations to consist of more sophisticated
paradigms and larger samples that will allow researchers to
examine the specicity of strategies to particular situations and
map those relationships onto individual differences and psycho-
pathology. In addition, it will be useful to examine the use of
strategies across other dimensions that organize emotions, such as
primary vs. secondary emotions (Greenberg, 2002), and motiva-
tional processes (e.g., Gable & Harmon-Jones, 2010). Moreover, it
will be valuable to identify additional contextual factors that might
inuence the implementation and effectiveness of adaptive regu-
lation strategies, such as additional dimensions of interpersonal
contexts (Rime, 2009) and demographic characteristics (e.g., Nolen-
Hoeksema & Aldao, 2011; Soto, Perez, Kim, Lee, & Minnick, 2011;
Zlomke & Hahn, 2010). Of particular interest will be the examina-
tion of the automaticity with which individuals notice contextual
variations, appraise them, and select emotion regulation strategies
(for a review on automatic emotion regulation, see Bargh &
Williams, 2007; Koole & Rothermund, 2011). Lastly, we believe
that it will be important for the eld to develop novel instruments
to assess emotion regulation that can capture idiographic
processes. One example is the Emotion Regulation Interview,
intended to assess the process model of emotion regulation (Gross,
1998) in individuals with social anxiety disorder by asking them
about responses during a laboratory speech task and two recent
anxiety provoking situations (Werner et al., 2011).
There were, of course, some limitations in this investigation.
First, we assessed emotions and their regulation via retrospective
report, which has been shown to be subject to reporting biases and
to have low correspondence with concurrent report (e.g., Ptacek
et al., 1994; Robinson & Clore, 2002; Stone et al., 2004). In addi-
tion, it is feasible that participants might have been biased to more
easily recall instances in which regulation was successful that not.
In our instructions to participants, we drew a distinction between
trying to regulate an emotion and actually achieving a desire
outcome with such regulation, and encouraged participants to
focus on any instances in which they attempted regulation
regardless of their outcome. However, we also collected data on
participants beliefs about their regulation and there was
a tendency for them to report being satised with the outcome,
which might suggest that there was a bias toward choosing certain
situations in which emotions were effectively regulated. A related
point pertains to the fact that participants tended to endorse
implementing more than one strategy per situation. Although this
could be construed as evidence supporting the notion that indi-
viduals have the capacity to implement strategies simultaneously
(therefore undermining the assumption of emotion regulation as
a linear process in Gross process model), it could also be a meth-
odological confound resulting from the retrospective reports of
emotion. In other words, it is feasible that participants spent several
minutes or even a couple of hours regulating the emotions elicited
499
by a single event, which would allow them to engage in a sequential
implementation of strategies. Because of this time confound, it is
not possible for us at this point to determine whether two e or
more e strategies were implemented simultaneously. Therefore,
we believe that it will be essential to seek to replicate our ndings
with additional methodologies, such as ecological momentary
assessment (EMA; e.g., Moberly & Watkins, 2008) and the use of
diaries in which individuals write about their experiences at the
end of the day (e.g., Shahar & Herr, 2011). In addition, it will be
important to assess emotion regulation retrospectively and
concurrently in tandem within investigations in order to system-
atically evaluate how these approaches differ from each other.
Second, we measured symptoms of psychopathology via self-
report questionnaires in an unselected sample, which might have
resulted in a restriction of range and therefore an attenuation of
some of our effects. In this respect, it will be critical to adopt this
functional approach to the study of situational emotion regulation
to study clinical populations. Relatedly, it will be important to
examine such relationships longitudinally. Third, as Tables 2and 3
show, the means and variability for adaptive and maladaptive
strategies were relatively low, therefore suggesting that we might
have encountered oor effects. It is possible that future work
administering this survey to samples consisting of participants
with clinical diagnoses and healthy controls might nd a broader
range in the implementation and variability scores.
Conclusion
The ndings from this investigation support the view that
context signicantly inuences the implementation of adaptive
emotion regulation strategies. Specically, participants varied in
their implementation of adaptive strategies, in a way that suggests
they are selecting what strategy is best for a particular context.
Moreover, the variability in implementation of adaptive strategies
(acceptance, problem solving) was associated with low levels of
psychopathology. A different picture emerged for putatively mal-
adaptive strategies, which showed more cross-sectional consis-
tency, that is, rigidity in their implementation and variability in
their use was not associated with psychopathology. Overall, our
ndings further underscore the importance of systematically
modeling contextual variations in the empirical investigation of the
processes by which emotion regulation strategies are implemented
and relate to psychopathology and well-being.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Julia Betensky, Christian Chan, Brett
Marroquin, and Vera Vine for their insightful comments on earlier
versions of the manuscript.
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