Emotion regulation in context: moderators of responses to positive affect, mania risk and mood symptoms

McGrogan, Claire L. (2021) Emotion regulation in context: moderators of responses to positive affect, mania risk and mood symptoms. Doctoral thesis, Northumbria University.

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Abstract

Emotion dysregulation is central to bipolar disorder and is also experienced by people considered to be at risk of mania. Several models of bipolar disorder, such as the Depression Avoidance Account (Abraham, 1911; Neale, 1988), Positive Emotion Persistence (Gruber, 2011) and Integrative Cognitive Model of mood swings (Mansell et al., 2007) highlight the relevance of use of emotion regulation strategies to the development and maintenance of mood symptoms. It is therefore suggested that understanding how emotion regulation relates to affect outcomes in the context of mania risk may help to identify people at risk of transition to bipolar disorder. Previous work has typically focused on the influence of negative affect regulation; however, the strategies used in response to positive affect are also understood to be relevant to general well-being and psychopathology, particularly bipolar disorder, but are less extensively researched. Additionally, where these associations have been explored, findings are often mixed, possibly as a result of lack of consideration of potential contextual moderators of the influence of emotion regulation strategies on affect, notably the beliefs individuals endorse about the malleability of emotions, and their social, and situational settings.

In addition to a systematic review that presents extant evidence relating to emotion regulation in mania risk, four studies were conducted to 1) explore the potential moderating role of use of positive emotion regulation strategies on the associations between mania risk and affect outcomes, 2) assess how beliefs about emotion malleability relate to mania risk and use of positive emotion regulation strategies, and investigate if 3) social and 4) situational contexts moderate the relationships between use of these strategies, mania risk and affect outcomes.

Findings suggest that mania risk and emotion regulation strategies share similar associations with affect, however these relationships are independent rather than moderating. Additionally, trait tendencies to use specific strategies appear to be more influential that context-specific regulation, however further research exploring dynamic associations between contextual factors with high-risk populations is needed.

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