High emotional differentiation buffer for internalizing symptoms after exposure to stressful life events in adolescents: an intensive longitudinal study.

First published March 29, 2021 Research Article

Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/2167702620979786

Commentary

Exposure to stressful life events is strongly associated with internalizing psychopathology, and factors that reduce vulnerability to stress-related internalizing problems are said to be important for the development of early interventions.

Using research in the affective sciences, we tested and investigated whether emotional differentiation prevents adolescents from developing internalizing symptoms when exposed to stress.

After 30 adolescents completed laboratory measures of emotional differentiation, they reported momentary levels (n = 4,921 experience sampling ratings) and monthly levels (n = 355 monthly ratings) of exposure to stress and internalization problems.

High negative and positive emotion differentiation weakened the moment-level association between perceived stress and depressive feelings, and high negative emotion differentiation eliminated the month-level association between stressful life events and anxiety symptoms.

These results suggest that high emotional differentiation buffers adolescents against anxiety and depression in the face of stress by promoting adaptive emotion regulation.