Emotion regulation variability and flexibility in daily life show distinct associations with well-being, age, and executive functions
4 affiliations
- 1Department of Psychology, RPTU University Kaiserslautern-Landau, Landau, Germany. [email protected]
- 2Department of Psychology, RPTU University Kaiserslautern-Landau, Landau, Germany
- 3Department of Psychology, School of Social Sciences, University of Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany
- 4Mental mHealth Lab, Institute of Sport and Sports Science, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe, Germany
Abstract
Flexible and effective emotion regulation (ER) is crucial for mental health and well-being. Research on individual differences in ER, however, has often relied on global self-reports or controlled laboratory settings, which may not fully capture the dynamic and context-dependent nature of regulation in daily life. To address this, we examined how ER variability and flexibility in real-world contexts relate to executive functions (EF), affective well-being, and age in a general population sample (N = 161, aged 14-78). EF performance was assessed using six online cognitive tasks, while ER variability and flexibility were assessed using a 14-day ambulatory assessment of daily emotional experiences. As expected, EF performance declined with increasing age across shifting, inhibition, and updating domains. Beyond these age-related differences in cognitive performance, older age was robustly associated with lower within- and between-strategy ER variability. In contrast, ER flexibility remained relatively stable across adulthood. Individual differences in EF were not associated with everyday ER variability, suggesting that cognitive control capacity does not account for regulatory dispersion in daily life. For affective well-being, ER flexibility showed specific, nonlinear associations: within-strategy flexibility based on situational valence and social context demonstrated U-shaped relations with unpleasant mood, suggesting that both low and high context sensitivity may be linked to elevated negative affect. In contrast, flexibility indices were unrelated to between-strategy variability or depressive symptoms. Overall, these findings indicate that adaptive ER cannot be reduced to greater executive control capacity, greater variability, or greater flexibility per se. Instead, they underscore the importance of distinguishing variability from flexibility and highlight that the adaptiveness of ER may depend more on the appropriateness of strategy-context matches than on general patterns of strategy use.
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BibTeX
@article{fuente2026emotion,
title = {{Emotion regulation variability and flexibility in daily life show distinct associations with well-being, age, and executive functions}},
author = {Dorian de la Fuente and Julia Karbach and Ulrike Basten and Julia Anna Glombiewski and Tina In‐Albon and Tanja Lischetzke and Christina Mema and Rebecca Anik Rammensee and Marcel C. Schmitt and Tanja Könen},
journal = {Scientific Reports},
year = {2026},
month = jun,
doi = {10.1038/s41598-026-57813-7},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-57813-7},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Emotion regulation variability and flexibility in daily life show distinct associations with well-being, age, and executive functions
AU - Dorian de la Fuente
AU - Julia Karbach
AU - Ulrike Basten
AU - Julia Anna Glombiewski
AU - Tina In‐Albon
AU - Tanja Lischetzke
AU - Christina Mema
AU - Rebecca Anik Rammensee
AU - Marcel C. Schmitt
AU - Tanja Könen
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/06/15
JO - Scientific Reports
DO - 10.1038/s41598-026-57813-7
UR - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-57813-7
AB - Flexible and effective emotion regulation (ER) is crucial for mental health and well-being. Research on individual differences in ER, however, has often relied on global self-reports or controlled laboratory settings, which may not fully capture the dynamic and context-dependent nature of regulation in daily life. To address this, we examined how ER variability and flexibility in real-world contexts relate to executive functions (EF), affective well-being, and age in a general population sample (N = 161, aged 14-78). EF performance was assessed using six online cognitive tasks, while ER variability and flexibility were assessed using a 14-day ambulatory assessment of daily emotional experiences. As expected, EF performance declined with increasing age across shifting, inhibition, and updating domains. Beyond these age-related differences in cognitive performance, older age was robustly associated with lower within- and between-strategy ER variability. In contrast, ER flexibility remained relatively stable across adulthood. Individual differences in EF were not associated with everyday ER variability, suggesting that cognitive control capacity does not account for regulatory dispersion in daily life. For affective well-being, ER flexibility showed specific, nonlinear associations: within-strategy flexibility based on situational valence and social context demonstrated U-shaped relations with unpleasant mood, suggesting that both low and high context sensitivity may be linked to elevated negative affect. In contrast, flexibility indices were unrelated to between-strategy variability or depressive symptoms. Overall, these findings indicate that adaptive ER cannot be reduced to greater executive control capacity, greater variability, or greater flexibility per se. Instead, they underscore the importance of distinguishing variability from flexibility and highlight that the adaptiveness of ER may depend more on the appropriateness of strategy-context matches than on general patterns of strategy use.
SN - 2045-2322
ER -