(PS11-98) The Relationship Between Emotion Regulation and Retrospective Bias in Emotionality: Findings from an Ecological Momentary Assessment Study

Abstract Text:

Background: People tend to overestimate the extent to which they experienced past emotions, especially negatively valanced emotions, which has implications for retrospective emotional self-report. Specifically, self-report measures that utilize recent timescales may rely on episodic memory processes that reflect emotional experience, while more distal timescales rely on semantic memory that reflect beliefs about emotions. Although emotion regulation (ER) processes impact memory encoding for emotional details, there have been few studies examining the impact of ER on emotional bias in self-report. Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) methods present an opportunity explore ER and emotional bias using precise current and retrospective timescales. The current study examines the impact of ER strategy use on retrospective bias in self-reported emotion over three days of EMA with a transdiagnostic clinical sample.


Methods: Twenty-five participants (M_age = 35.80,  SD = 11.46; 64% Female, 56% White) received four text prompts per day over three days to rate current levels of positive and negative emotions and indicate their use of purportedly adaptive (i.e., observing, allowing, distancing, and reframing) and maladaptive (i.e., worry, rumination) ER strategies. Retrospective emotionality over the past three days was measured during the last prompt of the last day. 

Results: Paired samples t-tests indicated that emotion scores for average current and three-day retrospective self-report significantly differed for both negative (t (19) = -5.93, p < .001; d = -2.72) and positive (t (19) = -3.33, p < .01; d = -1.53) emotions, suggesting that participants tended to overestimate the emotionality they experienced over the past three days, and this effect was greater for negative versus positive emotions.Time-varying bias was calculated as the absolute value of the difference between recalled emotion at the final prompt and current emotion rating at each prompt. Mixed linear models tested the hypothesis that greater use of adaptive and maladaptive ER strategies relate to lower and higher bias in emotional-self-report, respectively, controlling for current emotionality. Results indicate that greater use of reframing (b = -.22, SE = .09, p = .02) and rumination (b = -.01, SE = .00, p < .01) are associated with lower and higher retrospective bias of negative, respectively. Neither adaptive nor maladaptive ER skills use predicted retrospective bias on positive emotions (ps > .05).


Discussion: Overall, findings suggest that retrospective bias is present in emotional self-report after as little as three days for individuals with diagnosed psychopathology. Further, relying on rumination to regulate negative emotions may increase this bias, while adaptive ER strategies, such as reappraisal, can enhance negative emotional memory encoding. Understanding the biases that emerge in self-reported emotion has important implications for assessing clinical change during treatment, particularly for interventions designed to bolster ER.