Savoring the present: The reciprocal influence between positive emotions and positive emotion regulation in everyday life.

A growing body of research has investigated the regulation of negative emotions in ecological settings, but little is known about the mechanisms underlying positive emotion regulation in everyday life. Although some evidence suggests that adopting positive strategies is beneficial for emotional well-being, the literature is inconsistent about the effects of positive emotions on subsequent regulatory processes. In the present study, we adopted a two-week ecological momentary assessment to explore the association between positive emotions and positive emotion regulation in daily life. According to our results, the less individuals felt positive emotions at one point, the more they tended to enhance their use of positive strategies from this time to the next, which in turn resulted in subsequent higher levels of positive emotions. This prototype of positive regulation can be seen as a highly adaptive mechanism that makes it possible to compensate for a lack of positive emotions by enhancing the deployment of positive strategies. The theoretical and clinical implications of these findings are discussed.

1. Introduction

The pursuit of happiness is considered one of the most important life goals of individuals [1], who intensely seek to create pleasant experiences throughout their lives. Positive emotions (PE) are a core component of well-being because they are not limited to pleasant sensations, but rather produce short- and long-term psychological benefits and improve both physical and mental health [2-5]. More specifically, PE temporarily extend the scope of attention, cognition and action [6], which in turn promotes resilience and psychological well-being [7]. Accordingly, people spend most of their time trying to downregulate negative emotions and upregulate positive ones [8].

Emotion regulation is a process through which individuals try to influence their emotional state in order to achieve personal goals [9]. To date, most of the literature has focused on the regulation of negative emotional states. Nevertheless, there is increasing evidence highlighting the crucial role of positive emotion regulation [10,11], that is, the set of strategies people implement to create, maintain and enhance PE for two main purposes. First, people upregulate PE for its own sake, that is, to experience pleasurable states and increase happiness [12]. Second, the upregulation of PE has been recognised as a mood repair mechanism, i.e., a process that helps individuals to reduce negative affect and recover from stressful events [13,14].

Although originally conceptualized for negative emotion, Gross’ extended model (2015) [15] has also been used to understand positive emotion regulation [10]. Accordingly, different types of positive strategies can be deployed in different stages of the emotion generation process: (a) by selecting a situation that is expected to improve affect (situation selection); (b) by actively changing a situation in order to get the most out of it (situation modification); (c) by redirecting the attention towards specific features or details of a situation that might increase positive emotions (attentional deployment); (d) by changing the appraisal of an emotion-eliciting stimulus in order to amplify the associated pleasant state (cognitive change); and (e) by experientially, physiologically, or behaviourally expressing ongoing PE to further increase their intensity (response modulation). These strategies are implemented not only during the experience of a positive emotional state [10]. They might also be used before (i.e., while anticipating a positive event) [16] or after (i.e., while recalling a positive memory) [17] the emotion-generative process [10,11]. For the purposes of the present study, however, we will mainly focus on the available literature exploring PE regulation in the present.

When assessed in naturalistic settings, people use on average a repertoire of sixteen strategies in response to PE [18]. The implementation of positive emotion regulation has been shown to be beneficial for mental health, and a growing body of studies has revealed that people who frequently adopt strategies to intensify and prolong positive experiences (that is, savoring [19]) show enhanced emotional well-being [20,21] and more sustained PE over time [22]. For instance, a more extensive use of some strategies, such as counting blessings or sharing, leads to greater levels of happiness, despite experiencing few daily positive events [21,23]. In another study, Langston et al. [24] found that capitalizing on positive events (i.e., the process of beneficially seizing and interpreting positive situations) further increases the experience of positive emotions. Furthermore, the intense use of strategies, such as mindfulness and positive reappraisal, has been found to predict higher levels of psychological well-being and enhanced experience of positive emotional states [25,26]. In sum, there is a growing body of evidence that highlights the important emotional outcomes associated with the use of positive emotion regulation in daily life.

However, not only can emotion regulation influence emotional outcomes, but emotions can also determine subsequent emotion regulation processes [27]. This hypothesis is further confirmed by the evidence showing that momentary mood predicts subsequent affect levels [28], which suggests that emotion regulation might be partly determined by an individual’s momentary emotional state [29]. Nonetheless, the previous literature has been inconsistent about the association between PE and positive emotion regulation.

On the one hand, the broaden-and-build theory states that the experience of PE enhances one’s attentional scope and thought-action repertoire, leading to cognitive and behavioural broadening mechanisms [7,30] such as increased creativity or cognitive flexibility [31,32]. These mechanisms have been hypothesized to affect emotion regulation processes as well. Thus, positive emotions are likely to encourage the adoption of adaptive, broadminded strategies that further enhance positive states [7,33]. Consistent with this theory, the momentary experience of high levels of PE has been found to predict greater subsequent adoption of adaptive strategies such as problem solving [29] and mindfulness [34].

On the other hand, pro-hedonic theories, such as the hedonic flexibility principle, suggest that people are likely to implement behavioural strategies based on their momentary mood in order to minimize negative affect and maximize positive emotions [35,36]. More specifically, the experience of low positive emotions is supposed to motivate actions and behaviours to enhance mood. Thus, individuals are likely to increase their attempts to upregulate PE when experiencing a low rather than high level of PE. Recent studies have demonstrated that, when experiencing bad moods, people are more likely to engage in mood-enhancing activities, such as doing sport, going out in nature or chatting with a friend, whereas useful but mood-decreasing activities are pursued when the current mood is already high [36,37]. In another study, individuals were found to seek pleasant social relationships when feeling bad and prefer solitude or less pleasant social interactions when feeling good [38].

In sum, despite the growing evidence highlighting the importance of PE in mental health, there are still many unanswered questions about the regulatory mechanisms underlying positive states. Although positive emotion regulation has received increasing attention in the past decade, the effects of its momentary use are still unexplored. More specifically, whereas the findings about the emotional outcomes of positive emotion regulation are quite consistent, the effect of momentary PE on subsequent strategy implementation is still largely unknown. Importantly, momentary PE not only reflect the experience of a pleasant state, but they also represent an important source of information that drives regulatory mechanisms. Thus, exploring the reciprocal influences between PE and positive emotion regulation is important in order to disentangle the factors determining past, present and future positive emotional experiences.

The current study

The aim of the current study was to explore the reciprocal interconnection between PE and positive emotion regulation in daily life. To do so, we asked 85 undergraduate students to use a two-week Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA) to report their momentary levels of PE and rate the adoption of positive strategies to regulate ongoing PE. Despite the evidence showing that people’s repertoire of positive strategies is quite large [18], it would have been too demanding and time-consuming to assess a high quantity of items at each assessment. Accordingly, we decided to focus on a limited number of positive strategies and to exclude dampening ones (i.e., strategies that decrease the intensity of ongoing PE).

The rational adopted for selecting the strategies was based on Quoidbach et al.’s theory (2015) of positive emotion regulation. While the effectiveness of situation selection and situation modification strategies to enhance PE has been found to be weak or even largely unknown and controversial, there is more consistent evidence that supports the value of attentional deployment, cognitive change and response modulation strategies to increase positive emotions, especially in the short-term [10]. We therefore decided to focus on these three categories and, for each of them, two strategies were selected based on the previous literature relating positive emotion regulation to PE, thus making a total of 6 strategies: mindfulness, stimulus control, broadening, counting blessings, emotion expression, and sharing. The use of this rational allowed us to explore the association between PE and positive emotion regulation both at a strategy and category levels.

Attentional deployment refers to the set of strategies specifically designed to direct one’s attention in order to savour a pleasant emotional state, which in turn increases the experience of positive states both in the short and long terms [10]. In the present study, we explored the momentary use of mindfulness, which is focusing the attention on the present situation, and stimulus control, which refers to the attempt to avoid other negative thoughts in order to focus on the pleasant state. According to the previous literature, both strategies can play a role in daily positive emotional states. Indeed, a growing body of literature has found mindfulness to be associated with more intense and frequent positive emotions [20,25,39], which in turn has been shown to increase next-day mindfulness levels [34]. Furthermore, Heiy and Cheavens [18] found stimulus control to be one of the most frequently adopted strategies in response to PE that positively affect general mood.

Cognitive change refers to the attempt to influence the meaning of a positive stimulus, for example, by reappraising a positive situation as a special moment or by increasing the value attributed to a positive event. Generally, previous research has shown that reappraising a positive stimulus [40,41] and increasing the perceived value of a positive experience [42] are associated with enhanced levels of positive emotions. Indeed, not only does the adoption of cognitive change strategies enhance momentary positive emotional states, but it also has a modest impact on PE in the long-terms [10]. In the present study, we assessed participants’ use of broadening, which is thinking about the current pleasant state as part of a worthy life, and counting one’s blessings, i.e., thinking about the special moments by not taking them for granted. Whereas one’s perceived satisfaction and fulfilment in different aspects of life have been found to significantly affect emotional well-being [43], Wood et al. (2010) [44] showed the significant effect of counting one’s blessings on increasing positive emotions.

Finally, response modulation includes strategies to influence the physiological, experiential or behavioural response to a positive state, which usually involve expressing the emotion with either verbal or nonverbal communication. Indeed, the accumulated literature coming from embodied cognition research has suggested that expressing positive emotions both physically–for example, by facial display [45,46])—and verbally [24,47] can boost the experience of the associated positive state. Consistently, we assessed the momentary use of emotion expression (i.e., the use of the body to express and communicate ongoing PE) as well as sharing (i.e., the tendency to share positive experiences through verbal communication with other people).

The first objective of this study was to explore which of the two aforementioned theories better explains the association between PE and positive emotion regulation strategies. According to the broaden-and-build theory, the experience of intense PE fosters broadening mechanisms and the use of broad-minded positive strategies. In this case, and consistent with previous findings, high levels of PE should determine an increase in the subsequent use of positive strategies. In contrast, the hedonic flexible principle states that low mood, compared to high mood, predicts the implementation of strategies to enhance momentary emotions. Thus, a lower level of PE at a certain time should predict an increase in the use of positive emotion regulation from that time to the next.

The second objective of this study was to explore the unique impact of six positive emotion regulation strategies on subsequent PE. Consistent with the ample evidence showing the beneficial emotional outcomes of positive regulation, we expected to find that increased use of positive strategies at one point predicted enhanced PE in the following assessment.

The third objective was to investigate whether the reciprocal influence between PE and positive emotion regulation changes significantly depending on the intrinsic nature of strategies, as defined by the three categories explored in the present study: attentional deployment, cognitive change and response modulation. To this aim, we explored whether strategy category significantly moderated the association between positive emotion regulation and PE and, more specifically: (a) whether the strategy category moderated the impact of PE at t0 on positive regulation at t1, and (b) whether the strategy category moderated the effect of positive regulation on subsequent levels of PE.

2. Material and methods

2.1 Inclusion criteria and sample

In order to exclude the potential confounding effect of depression, which has been shown to be associated with an impaired use of savoring strategies and an increased adoption of dampening strategies [48,49], individuals with a score above 14 on the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) [50] were excluded from the study (i.e., individuals with moderate to severe depressive conditions; n = 6). Similar to the sample size of previous EMA studies on emotion regulation [29,51], we recruited 85 undergraduate students at Jaume I University (Castellon, Spain). The sample was composed of 67 females (77.9%) and 19 males (22.1%); their ages ranged between 18 and 36 years (M: 22.07; SD:3.45).

This study was approved by the ethics committee of Jaume I University (certificate number: CD/57/2019), and informed consent was obtained from each participant.

2.2 Material

Participants were prompted three times a day for two weeks to complete a brief questionnaire on their smartphone, reaching a total of 42 potential observations for each participant. Consistent with previous studies, this sampling frequency has been shown to be adequate for the assessment of daily emotion regulation patterns [18] and it leads to good compliance levels [16,17]. In the present study, 2726 out of 3570 possible assessments were obtained, thus revealing a mean compliance of 76.34% (SD = 18.12), ranging between 33% and 100%.

At each prompt, participants were first asked to rate the momentary intensity of seven PE on a Likert scale from 1 to 5 (1 = not at all, 5 = a lot). The seven emotions were selected in order to include both low-arousal (hope, serenity, gratitude) and high-arousal (happiness, amusement, excitement, pride) positive emotions [52], which is consistent with the evidence showing the influence of positive regulation on both types of positive emotions [26]. To obtain a general indicator of PE, the seven positive emotions rated at each assessment were averaged. The composite score obtained showed high internal consistency at both the between- (α = .96) and within-individual levels (α = .86).

Participants were also asked to rate the momentary adoption of six positive strategies on a 0–100 scale (0 = no adoption, 100 = high adoption), which were selected with the aim of exploring three categories of positive regulation [10]: mindfulness and stimulus control for the category ‘attentional deployment’; broadening and counting blessings for the category ‘cognitive change’; emotion expression and sharing for the category ‘response modulation’. Due to the lack of validated questionnaires to assess positive strategies, ad hoc single items were created (see ), as is common in ecological studies exploring emotion regulation [see, for example, 25,30,32,38]. These items were mostly inspired by a previous study [18].

Similar to previous EMA studies exploring the reciprocal influences between emotion and emotion regulation [see for example 28,35,43], change scores were calculated for each strategy, indicating whether a strategy was used more or less at a certain time (t1), compared to the previous assessment (t0). These scores were calculated to analyse to what extent PE at t0 influenced positive emotion regulation change from t0 to t1. To compute change scores that are not affected by the so-called ‘regression toward the mean effect’, change scores were computed through linear mixed-effects models with maximum likelihood by taking the residuals of a model in which the strategy at t1 was regressed on itself at t0. In addition, strategy type was also taken into account in the analyses to explore further the relationship between PE and positive regulation depending on the intrinsic nature of the strategies adopted. To do so, strategies were averaged based on their category. This made it possible to obtain three new variables that reflected the intensity of use of each category of strategy. To assess the internal consistency of the new variables, correlations for each pair of strategies were performed at the between-individual level (attentional deployment: r = .882, p < .001; cognitive change: r = .981, p < .001; response modulation: r = .936, p <. 001) and within-individual level (attentional deployment: r = .556, p < .001; cognitive change: r = .732, p < .001; response modulation: r = .630, p < .001).

2.3 Procedure

Participants were recruited via social media and poster advertisements placed in different buildings at the university. Students willing to participate were invited to visit the laboratory to receive more details about the study design and sign the informed consent.

The EMA phase lasted 14 days. Participants received three daily semi-random prompts (between 9:30–14:00, 14:00–18:30, and 18:30–23:00) to complete the momentary assessment through the data collection program Qualtrics. To prevent backfilling, participants were given sixty minutes to access the survey; after that period of time, the assessment was marked as missing. During the entire study, participants could contact a researcher on the team to resolve technical issues.

At the end of the study, participants were invited to return to the laboratory for a debriefing session. Participants who replied to at least 65% of the total EMA assessments received a monetary remuneration of 10 euros.

2.4 Statistical analyses

The datasets of the analyses and the R code are contained in an open-access file available on the OSF website at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/TEUBR. The data analytic strategy followed three steps that are similar to the steps found in previous ecological momentary assessment studies on reciprocal influences between emotions and actions [29,36,53].

In an initial data preparation step, all the variables of interest were person-mean-centred to enable the examination of within-individual processes. Then, to analyse the relationships between variables assessed at two consecutive time points (t0 and t1), data were lagged. This meant deleting assessments that were not directly preceded or followed by another completed assessment (n = 558). Consequently, each row of the data frame analysed contained participants’ responses to two consecutive assessments (see the ‘Data.csv’ file at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/TEUBR).

The first aim of the study was to examine the effect of the PE felt at a given time on the subsequent implementation of positive strategies. To this end, a series of linear mixed-effects models containing one random intercept per participant were estimated using maximum likelihood with the R lmerTest package [54]. Linear mixed-effects models were computed to take into account the hierarchical nature of the data. In this step, six models were computed (i.e., one per strategy). The dependent variable entered in each model was the change in the strategy of interest from t0 to t1, whereas the main independent variable was PE at t0. Two other independent variables were also included to neutralize their possible confounding effects: the use of each strategy at t0 and PE at t1. PE at t1 was included as a control variable. Not controlling for PE at t1 could produce a biased estimation of the effect of PE at t0 on the subsequent implementation of emotion regulation strategies. As PE at t1 was related to PE at t0 and strategy changes from t0 to t1, it could represent a confounding variable when attempting to determine the specific relationship between PE at t0 and strategy changes from t0 to t1. Therefore, to ensure that the effect of PE at t0 on strategy changes from t0 to t1 was not actually explained by PE at t1’s relationships with both variables, we controlled for PE at t1

The second aim of the study was to examine the effect of positive emotion regulation strategies on subsequent PE level. To this end, one linear mixed-effects model was computed that contained PE at t1 as the dependent variable and change in the use of each strategy from t0 to t1 as independent variables. PE at t0 was also included as a control variable to neutralize the so-called regression towards the mean effect. Taken together, the analyses conducted to explore the first and second objectives of this study made it possible to analyse similar phenomena to those analysed in previous studies on reciprocal influences between emotions and actions in everyday life without resorting to their semi-retrospective assessment of strategy use (i.e., the effect of emotions at one time on the actions occurring between this time and a following time, and the effect of the actions performed within this time interval on concurrent emotional changes [e.g., 28,35,43]).

The third aim of the study was to explore whether the relationships between PE and positive emotion regulation significantly changed depending on strategy category. To this end, the dataset on which our analyses were based was restructured to obtain a data frame where each row contained a participant’s responses to two consecutive assessments for one strategy category. In this restructured data frame, each pair of consecutive assessments completed consisted of three rows (one for the intensity of the use of attentional deployment strategies, one for the intensity of the use of cognitive change strategies and one for the intensity of the use of response modulation strategies; see the ‘Data_ST.csv’ file at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/TEUBR). Then, the two types of linear mixed-effects models mentioned for the first and second aims of the study were computed again, but with slight modifications. A first model was designed to examine whether the effect of PE at t0 on the change in strategy use depended on the category of the strategy considered. The dependent variable was change in strategy use from t0 to t1, whereas the independent variables were PE at t0 and the interaction with the strategy category (i.e., a categorical variable with three modalities: attentional deployment, cognitive change, response modulation), with PE at t1 as a control variable. A second model was designed to examine the effects of change in strategy use on subsequent PE depending on the category of strategy considered. This model included PE at t1 as the dependent variable, whereas the independent variables were change in strategy intensity, its interaction with the strategy category, and PE at t0.

3. Results

3.1 The influence of experienced positive emotions on positive emotion regulation

Descriptive statistics are shown in . They provide an initial general overview of the association between PE and positive emotion regulation.

The first aim of the study was to explore the effects of PE on positive emotion regulation. In a series of linear mixed-effects models (), we therefore examined how PE at t0 influenced changes in each of the strategies at t1, controlling for the use of each strategy at t0 and for PE at t1.

Results showed that the effects were all negative and significant. In other words, the less individuals felt positive emotions at t0, the more they tended to enhance the use of mindfulness (b = -0.16, SE = 0.023, p < 0.001), stimulus control (b = -0.105, SE = 0.025, p < 0.001), broadening (b = -0.075, SE = 0.024, p < 0.01), counting blessings (b = -0.124, SE = 0.023, p < 0.001), emotion expression (b = -0.0647, SE = 0.025, p < 0.01), and sharing (b = -0.069, SE = 0.025, p < 0.01) from this time to the next. Therefore, our results seem to confirm the hypothesis postulated by the hedonic flexibility principle, suggesting that the experience of low PE is likely to motivate individuals to subsequently increase the use of positive strategies in order to upregulate positive emotional states.

3.2 The influence of positive emotion regulation on experienced positive emotions

The second aim of the study was to explore the emotional outcomes of positive emotion regulation. We hypothesized that strategy change at t0 would predict PE at t1 and, more specifically, that an increase in the use of positive strategies would be associated with a greater experience of PE in the subsequent assessment.

To test this hypothesis, a linear mixed-effects model was performed that included PE at t1 as the dependent variable (). Confirming our hypothesis, all the strategies were found to predict PE positively at t1, and, thus, an increase in the use of positive strategies at one time enhanced the experience of PE in the subsequent assessment (mindfulness: b = 0.284, SE = 0.024, p < 0.001; stimulus control: b = 0.046, SE = 0.021, p < 0.05; broadening: b = 0.093, SE = 0.026, p < 0.001; counting blessings: b = 0.125, SE = 0.025, p < 0.001; emotion expression: b = 0.192, SE = 0.022, p < 0.001; sharing: b = 0.093, SE = 0.022, p < 0.001), controlling for PE at t0 (b = 0.21, SE = 0.016, p < .001).

3.3 The moderating role of strategy category

Finally, we explored whether the association between PE and positive emotion regulation significantly changed depending on the strategy category. A first linear mixed-effects model investigated whether the strategy category affected the impact of PE at t0 on strategy use at t1 (). However, no significant interactions were observed.

We then examined whether the strategy category influenced the effect of change in strategy use on subsequent levels of PE ().

Interestingly, results revealed that the strategy category moderated the association between the change in strategy use and PE. More specifically, there was a significant interaction between change in strategy use and response modulation (b = -0.161, SE = .027, p <. 001) and a close-to-significant trend in the interaction between change in strategy intensity and cognitive change (b = -0.054, SE = .027, p = .059). As shows, the use of response modulation strategies to enhance PE was significantly less effective than the adoption of attentional deployment strategies.

4. Discussion

To date, although the use of strategies to regulate negative emotions has been extensively explored, the regulation of positive emotional states in everyday life has received little attention. The aim of the current study was to deepen our knowledge about PE and its underlying regulatory mechanisms. Overall, we showed that PE determines positive emotion regulation, which in turn affects subsequent levels of PE, thus confirming the existence of a reciprocal influence between momentary PE and positive emotion regulation.

The first aim of the study was to explore the effects of PE on positive emotion regulation. The results showed that PE at t0 significantly predicted positive emotion regulation at t1 and, more specifically, that the less individuals felt PE at one time (t0), the more they tended to increase the use of positive strategies from this point to the next (from t0 to t1). Experiencing low levels of PE is, therefore, likely to shift one’s efforts towards implementing strategies to reach a more positive emotional state. These findings are consistent with the hedonic flexibility principle [35,36], suggesting that individuals are likely to be motivated to upregulate PE as a consequence of low momentary affect. This regulatory mechanism might be seen as a highly adaptive process that can compensate for the lack of PE through an increased use of positive strategies, regardless of their nature (i.e., attentional, cognitive or behavioural). Moreover, the findings of the present study might also be understood in light of the affective baseline theory [55], which postulates the existence of a baseline functioning of an individual’s affective system. According to this theory, although fluctuations around the home-base are the natural consequence of internal and external life events, affect is constantly brought back to the baseline by an attractive component consisting of regulatory mechanisms. Thus, the experience of low PE might encourage individuals to implement strategies that induce a return to the baseline, which has been shown to be defined by a slightly positive valence [56].

In spite of being coherent with the hedonic theories, our results diverge from previous studies that showed increased implementation of positive strategies as a consequence of high levels of positive emotions [18,29,53]. A possible explanation for these divergent results might be found in the EMA design. All the previous studies adopted a momentary evaluation of the emotional state but a retrospective assessment of emotion regulation, asking participants to rate the strategies used since the last prompt (i.e., in the previous few hours). Thus, when analysing the effect of emotions at one point on subsequent strategy use, emotion regulation strategies were closer in time to the emotions than in our study, which assessed emotion regulation at exactly the same time as PE. In fact, there is evidence showing that soon after an emotion, mood-congruent processes take place, whereas mood-incongruent processes tend to follow [57]. Furthermore, the two theories suggested by the previous literature could be reconciled. The broaden-and-build theory states that the experience of PE encourages the building of adaptive resources and boosts the creation of coping skills, which in turn foster well-being. Accordingly, this ‘resource-building process’ might involve mechanisms that help to enhance affect when experiencing low PE and maintain a positive mood (i.e., consistent with hedonic theories), which in turn would promote psychological well-being and resilience in the long term.

The second aim of the study was to explore the unique emotional outcomes of positive emotion regulation. Confirming our hypothesis, an increase in the use of all six strategies resulted in enhanced PE in the subsequent assessment. In previous studies, trait savoring was found to be associated with greater happiness and well-being [20], whereas state savoring was shown to predict increased positive emotions [21]. Therefore, these results are consistent with the previous literature and support the adaptive role of positive emotion regulation in emotional well-being.

Finally, our third aim was to investigate whether the reciprocal influence between PE and positive emotion regulation changed significantly depending on the intrinsic nature of the strategies. The results showed that the strategy category significantly moderated the association between the change in strategy use and subsequent PE. More specifically, the use of response modulation strategies (e.g., sharing and emotional expression) was significantly less effective than the adoption of attentional deployment strategies and produced a less important increase in subsequent PE. Sharing positive experiences has been shown to improve one’s perception in the eyes of others, leading to increased self-esteem [58] and life satisfaction [20]. This strategy might, therefore, indirectly increase PE by mainly targeting other dimensions of an individual’s well-being. Furthermore, the benefits of sharing have been shown to depend on how the recipient responds to the news (actively/constructively or passively/destructively) [58], which could further justify the mitigated effects of this strategy on momentary PE found in our study. In contrast, emotional expression refers to the verbal or nonverbal expression of an ongoing emotion [59], which makes it possible to rapidly and adaptively react to environmental threats and opportunities [60]. Emotional expression may foster PE, especially in the short term (i.e., soon after the emotion is produced), thus showing reduced effects in the long term. As suggested in a previous study [20], positive emotion regulation might not only increase only PE. Instead, each strategy may target different dimensions of the person’s emotional well-being, thus involving different emotional outcomes. However, further studies are needed to disentangle the unique emotional consequences of positive emotion regulation.

Although this study sheds new light on the mechanisms underlying the experience of PE, we acknowledge several limitations that could be addressed by future research.

First, our study involved a sample of 85 healthy undergraduate individuals. Future studies are needed to explore the reciprocal influence between PE and positive emotion regulation in a more diverse sample.

Second, we excluded participants who presented moderate-to-severe depressive symptoms. It is possible that the patterns observed in the present study cannot be extended to samples of patients suffering from an emotional disorder [61], who are typically prone to dampening rather than savoring PE [48,49]. Reasonably, an abnormal functioning of this mechanism might be observed in this population, which could be defined by a lack of motivation or capacity to implement positive strategies despite experiencing low PE, or by reduced efficacy in using positive strategies to increase PE levels. Future studies should confirm this hypothesis.

Third, our study specifically focused on PE, without studying the role of negative affect on positive emotion regulation. A growing body of evidence shows that positive and negative affect do not lie on opposite ends of a bipolar scale; instead, they can be experienced simultaneously [62,63]. In our study, we found that the experience of low PE was associated with a greater use of positive strategies, which might suggest that upregulating PE also serves as a mechanism to repair mood [64]. Nevertheless, the absence of a variable assessing momentary negative emotions keeps us from confirming this hypothesis, which should be addressed in future studies.

Fourth, the daily EMA included the assessment of only six positive strategies. On the one hand, there is evidence that people’s repertoire for dealing with PE includes a wider range of strategies that were not explored in this study [65]. On the other hand, the use of maladaptive strategies in response to positive states (e.g., dampening) was not taken into consideration, thus limiting the findings of the present study to the mechanisms underlying the upregulation of PE.

Finally, the use of ad hoc single items to assess a multifaceted construct such as emotion regulation might not fully capture the complexity of this process. In addition to the fact that the use of ad hoc items is common in EMA studies [see for example, 25,30,32,38], the validated questionnaires available to assess positive emotion regulation mainly measure an individual’s tendency to savour positive emotions (see for example [11,66,67]), rather than measuring to what extent specific strategies are adopted in response to a specific stimulus (e.g., state emotion regulation). The lack of validated measures for the assessment of momentary positive regulation led us to create our own single items. Moreover, there is evidence that long EMA questionnaires usually lead to higher perceived burden [68], which further supports the decision to include only a few items to assess emotion regulation. Indeed, the inclusion of a broader set of items could have resulted in decreased compliance and increased participant burden, thus affecting the quality of the data collected. As Trull and Ebner-Premier [69] recently stated, EMA is still a field with several methodological aspects that remain unclear. Accordingly, there is the need to expand and improve this research field further by, for instance, creating validated measures to be used in EMA designs or developing rigorous guidelines that guides researchers in the design of EMA studies.

Despite these limitations, our research adds to the previous literature by extending our knowledge about PE and the underlying regulatory mechanisms. More specifically, we showed that low levels of PE determine an increase in the use of strategies to upregulate PE, which in turn results in a better mood.

Although further studies are needed to confirm these findings, our study sheds new light on the importance of PE for emotional well-being, and it opens up new avenues to understand the dysfunctional regulation of positive emotional states in emotional disorders.

26 Oct 2020

PONE-D-20-28135

Savoring the present: The reciprocal influence between positive emotions and positive emotion regulation in everyday life

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Colombo,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

I have now received 2 reviews of your manuscript from experts in the field. Both reviewers identified several strengths in your paper, including the potential contribution of the research to the field. However, the reviewers also note several areas of weakness where more information and greater elaboration of the theoretical framework underlying the research would be beneficial. In particular, both reviewers note issues with how Gross’s process model of emotion regulation has been applied in the current research and could be better articulated. Reviewer 1 in particular highlights issues with the way in which the emotion regulation strategies have been described including a lack of a clear fit with Gross’s model.

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1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Partly

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

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Reviewer #1: My biggest concern with the current study is that the factorial and construct validity of the use of ad-hoc single items to assess the implementation of positive strategies. Although in the discussion, the authors state that “the use of ad-hoc single items to assess a multifaceted construct like emotion regulation might have not fully captured the complexity of this process”, the explanation that “no validated questionnaire assessing state positive regulation has been so far developed” is not sufficient.

Second, the classification of positive strategies may appear arbitrary. For example, the authors categorised two strategies, broadening and count blessing, into the “cognitive change” group. The item that used to assess “broadening” strategy is that “I’m thinking about all the good things that I have and that are happening in my life as well. ” and the item that used to assess count blessing is that “I’m thinking about how lucky I am to live this moment and feel so good. However, within the process model of emotion regulation (Gross, 1998, 2015), the core element of cognitive change is modifying the meaning of the situation to alter an emotional response. Theoretically, they are different strategies.

Third, as a measure of the momentary intensity of positive emotions, participants were asked to rate 7 adjectives on a 1-5 Likert, including “happiness, amusement, hope, serenity, excitement, pride, gratitude”. However, the reasons for choosing these adjectives are not clarified.

Fourth, the authors mention in their discussion that “upregulating PE may therefore serve as a mechanism to repair mood and reduce the experience of unpleasant affective states”. This conclusion is arbitrary due to it may be based on the assumption that PA and NA are on two opposite ends of a bipolar scale (i.e., People can be experiencing one type of affect to a certain degree but not the other at the same time). Indeed, there is a growing body of evidence that positive and negative affect can co-occur simultaneously (e.g., Berrios, Totterdell, & Kellett, 2015; Larsen & McGraw, 2011).

Fifth, the authors mention in the introduction “people who frequently adopt savouring strategies, for instance, show higher happiness, greater positive affect and enhanced emotional well-beings ” (Page 4, Paraphrase 2). However, the meaning of “savouring strategies” did not clearly defined at any other point in the manuscript.

Reviewer #2: This manuscript summarizes an interesting study on an understudied topic. Although there are several notable limitations and suggestions for the manuscript (listed below), the study, particularly objective 1, may offer a contribution to the literature.

1. The introduction mentions multiple ways people can regulate emotions (e.g., Gross’s process model and Bryant’s conceptualization of savoring past, present, future), but these aren’t well integrated or applied to the current study. It is recommended that the authors are more explicit about how frameworks relate and inform the current study.

2. More justification should be provided about how and why the use of specific positive emotion regulation strategies should predict more positive emotions over time. Authors should explain what strategies they examine and why these may be useful to increase positive affect. They should mention that they only include ‘adaptive’ strategies given that maladaptive ones (e.g., dampening, suppressing, etc.) may curtail positive affect. Authors should incorporate other longitudinal studies that have shown that savoring types of ER strategies increase positive emotions over time. Examples include: Gentzler, Morey, Palmer, & Yi, 2012; Hurley & Kwon, 2013; Jose, Lim, Bryant, 2012; Langston, 1994.

3. Researchers should justify their sample size of 85 undergraduates and their chosen time frame for the study (3 measurements a day for two weeks). There is no rationale for either. It also isn’t clear if they eliminated anyone due to not completing a minimum number of ESM assessments.

4. Were the emotion scales labeled (the 1 and 5 endpoints or each number)?

5. The ER questions need additional details so the reader can understand what was done and why. Examples should be provided. What is “stimulus control” as a ER strategy? Why are difference scores computed and what do Time 0 to Time 1 represent? (A little more information is given in the results, but it should be defined in the method given it is first mentioned there.) There are existing measures of positive emotion regulation in the literature so better explaining the benefits of these items may be helpful.

6. Descriptives for the emotion and ER rates should be provided (maybe in Table 1).

7. In Table 2, the notations to flag significant associations are included but they don’t actually use them in the table. Instead they write out the p-values. However, given the table is very hard to read, using asterisks is recommended.

8. Researchers tested additional hypotheses not outlined in the introduction. These should not take the reader by surprise, so these should be mentioned and justified earlier.

9. The benefits of sharing positive experiences also depend on how the recipients respond to the news (Shelly Gable’s research). Therefore, recipients’ supportive v. less supportive responses may mitigate its positive effects sometimes.

10. Additional limitations include not including maladaptive responses to PA (e.g., dampening) and negative affect. When people are lower on PA, do they also do more ineffective ER? It seems likely that they do not solely use the types of ER strategies that happened to be assessed here.

11. There are many grammatical issues with this paper, so these would need to be corrected.

**********

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Reviewer #2: No

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17 Nov 2020

Reviewer #1

My biggest concern with the current study is that the factorial and construct validity of the use of ad-hoc single items to assess the implementation of positive strategies. Although in the discussion, the authors state that “the use of ad-hoc single items to assess a multifaceted construct like emotion regulation might have not fully captured the complexity of this process”, the explanation that “no validated questionnaire assessing state positive regulation has been so far developed” is not sufficient.

Thank you for raising this point. As mentioned in the discussion, the use of single items to assess positive strategies might represent a criticism of the study. However, to the best of our knowledge, there aren’t validated items assessing state (e.g., momentary) positive regulation. The available questionnaires usually assess positive emotion regulation in a more general way (see for example the Response Style to Positive Affect Scale, which assesses emotion-focused or self-focused savoring; the Savoring Belief Inventory, which only explores savoring in terms of anticipating, experiencing or recalling positive states; or the Emotion Regulation Profile-Revised, which consists of narratives rather than items). Additionally, most of the available emotion regulation questionnaires relies on the idea that emotion regulation is a trait of a person, thus assessing emotion regulation as a cross-situational tendency. Only a few questionnaires have been developed to assess state emotion regulation (i.e., the momentary adoption of strategies in relation to a specific event, which would fit better with the use of EMA), but only in relation to negative emotions (see for example the Brief State Rumination Inventory, Marchetti et al., 2018; or the State Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale, Lavender et al., 2017). Finally, there is evidence showing that longer EMA questionnaires usually imply higher perceived burden and lower compliance to the experimental protocol, which further support our choice to use single items. Thus, integrating a full questionnaire of positive regulation in the EMA would have been counterproductive.

Broadly talking, the use of single items isn’t just a limitation of our study, but a very important issue of the EMA literature. Indeed, almost all EMA studies rely on the use of ad-hoc items, thus raising important issues regarding their construct validity. We acknowledge this criticism, and we recognise that there is the need to further expand this research field by creating validated measures to be used in momentary assessments. These efforts have been already made in other research fields. An example is the Distress Thermometer, a single measure which has been developed to assess “unpleasant experience of a mental, physical, social, or spiritual nature”. Similarly, validated items to assess emotion regulation should be created in the near future.

As the reviewer will see, we have tried to incorporate the aforementioned considerations in the manuscript and to better justify the use of single items (from line 484).

Second, the classification of positive strategies may appear arbitrary. For example, the authors categorised two strategies, broadening and count blessing, into the “cognitive change” group. The item that used to assess “broadening” strategy is that “I’m thinking about all the good things that I have and that are happening in my life as well. ” and the item that used to assess count blessing is that “I’m thinking about how lucky I am to live this moment and feel so good. However, within the process model of emotion regulation (Gross, 1998, 2015), the core element of cognitive change is modifying the meaning of the situation to alter an emotional response. Theoretically, they are different strategies.

This is a very interesting point, thank you for the comment. Our study was based on Gross’ model of emotion regulation (2015), which was originally thought for the regulation of negative affective states. Recently, Quoidbach et al. (Quoidbach, Mikolajczak and Gross, 2015) applied Gross’ model to explain and understand the regulation of positive emotions. Accordingly, our study was inspired by Quoidbach et al.’s theory.

In their model, Quoidbach et al. suggest counting blessings (“Are you realizing how lucky you are or are you taking the situation for granted?”) as an example of cognitive change in response to positive emotions, which is described as the attempt to “change how one appraises the situation in order to alter its emotional significance” by “appraising the situation as a special moment” or “by increasing how valuable positive events appear”. We therefore decided to include count blessing as a cognitive change strategy. Furthermore, we included broadening as a further example of cognitive change because it does reflect a way of appraising a positive situation and generalizing it to one’s positive things in life, which is consistent with the aforementioned definition.

Regarding the second category, Quoidbach et al. define attentional deployment as the attempt to influence positive emotions by specifically directing the attention within a situation (“What do you purposefully pay attention to during your date night?”). Accordingly, we decided to include mindfulness (I’m trying to be focused on the present and to concentrate on how good I feel) and stimulus control (I’m trying to avoid all negative thoughts and stressors in order to focus and take the most of my positive emotions) as two strategies that reflects the attempt to modify one’s attentional focus in order to take the most out of a positive emotion.

Finally, Quoidbach et al. describe response modulation as the attempt to “influence physiological, experiential, or behavioral responding as directly as possible” and suggest social sharing and emotional expression as two examples of this category (“Are you laughing and sharing your positive feelings with your partner or, conversely, hiding your emotions?”). We therefore decided to include both strategies to represent this category.

We do completely agree with the reviewer that clearer definitions of the categories were missing. We have now substantially modified the manuscript in order to clarify these points Moreover, and consistent with reviewer#2’s suggestion to explain why we expected those strategies to increase positive emotions, we have also tried to further justify the selection of the six specific strategies included in the study (from line 192; from line 198).

Third, as a measure of the momentary intensity of positive emotions, participants were asked to rate 7 adjectives on a 1-5 Likert, including “happiness, amusement, hope, serenity, excitement, pride, gratitude”. However, the reasons for choosing these adjectives are not clarified.

Thank you for raising this issue. We have now included more details regarding the selection of the seven positive emotions. More specifically, a previous study found that the regulation of positive emotions is likely to affect both active (e.g. happiness) and deactive (e.g., calmness) positive affect (Nezleck et al., 2008). Accordingly, we selected the seven emotions in order to include both low- (hope, serenity, gratitude) and high-arousal (happiness, amusement, excitement, pride) positive emotions. This information has been now included in the manuscript (from line 184).

Fourth, the authors mention in their discussion that “upregulating PE may therefore serve as a mechanism to repair mood and reduce the experience of unpleasant affective states”. This conclusion is arbitrary due to it may be based on the assumption that PA and NA are on two opposite ends of a bipolar scale (i.e., People can be experiencing one type of affect to a certain degree but not the other at the same time). Indeed, there is a growing body of evidence that positive and negative affect can co-occur simultaneously (e.g., Berrios, Totterdell, & Kellett, 2015; Larsen & McGraw, 2011).

We completely understand the reviewer’s point. As correctly mentioned by the reviewer, and consistent with an extensive literature, experiencing low levels of positive emotions does not imply experiencing high levels of negative affect. Indeed, the fact that we only assessed momentary PE could be considered a limitation of the study, as it does not allow to fully comprehend the reciprocal influence between positive emotion regulation and momentary affect (both positive and negative). We therefore decided to move this statement to the limitations of the study and to discuss it in more details. More specifically, we state that, despite the results might support the mood-repair theory, such conclusion can’t be confirmed because of the lack of information regarding momentary negative affect (from line 470).

Fifth, the authors mention in the introduction “people who frequently adopt savouring strategies, for instance, show higher happiness, greater positive affect and enhanced emotional well-beings ” (Page 4, Paraphrase 2). However, the meaning of “savouring strategies” did not clearly defined at any other point in the manuscript.

Thank you very much for pointing out this issue. We have now included a short definition of “savoring strategies” in the introduction (line 96).

Reviewer #2

1. The introduction mentions multiple ways people can regulate emotions (e.g., Gross’s process model and Bryant’s conceptualization of savoring past, present, future), but these aren’t well integrated or applied to the current study. It is recommended that the authors are more explicit about how frameworks relate and inform the current study.

Thank you for the suggestion. The introduction has been significantly revised in order to conceptualize in a clearer way the different frameworks related to the regulation of positive emotion regulation. More specifically, we have now underlined that, despite emotion regulation can occur before (anticipating), during (experiencing) or after (recalling) the generation of a positive emotion, the focus of our study is on the application of Gross’ extended model to the regulation of ongoing positive emotions suggested by Quoidbach et al. (thus, experiencing) (from line 89, from line 145).

2. More justification should be provided about how and why the use of specific positive emotion regulation strategies should predict more positive emotions over time. Authors should explain what strategies they examine and why these may be useful to increase positive affect. They should mention that they only include ‘adaptive’ strategies given that maladaptive ones (e.g., dampening, suppressing, etc.) may curtail positive affect. Authors should incorporate other longitudinal studies that have shown that savoring types of ER strategies increase positive emotions over time. Examples include: Gentzler, Morey, Palmer, & Yi, 2012; Hurley & Kwon, 2013; Jose, Lim, Bryant, 2012; Langston, 1994.

We completely agree with the reviewer’s point. The rationale behind the selection of the strategies was not adequately developed. In order to address this issue, two main changes were made.

First, and according to reviewer#1 suggestion, a more detailed explanation about the classification of positive strategies has been provided, which was based on the work by Quoidbach et al. (Quoidbach, Mikolajczak and Gross, 2015), who applied Gross’ emotion regulation model to the regulation of positive emotions (from line 192; from line 198).

- Cognitive change: In this work, the authors provide count blessing (“Are you realizing how lucky you are or are you taking the situation for granted?”) as an example of cognitive change in response to positive emotions, which is described as the attempt to “change how one appraises the situation in order to alter its emotional significance” by “appraising the situation as a special moment” and suggesting that “positive emotions do not depend on situations per se as much as they depend on the way individuals interpret these situations”. We therefore decided to include count blessing as a cognitive change strategy. Furthermore, we included broadening as a further example of cognitive change because it does reflect a way of appraising a positive situation as a special moment, which is consistent with the aforementioned definition. Moreover, broadening has been shown to be one of the most used strategies in response to positive emotions (Heiy and Cheavens, 2014).

- Attentional deployment: The authors define attentional deployment as the attempt to influence positive emotions by specifically directing our attention within a situation (“What do you purposefully pay attention to during your date night?”). Accordingly, we decided to include mindfulness (I’m trying to be focused on the present and to concentrate on how good I feel) and stimulus control (I’m trying to avoid all negative thoughts and stressors in order to focus and take the most of my positive emotions) as two strategies that reflects the attempt to modify one’s attentional focus in order to take the most out of a positive emotion.

- Response modulation: The authors define response modulation as the attempt to “influence physiological, experiential, or behavioral responding as directly as possible” and suggest social sharing and emotional expression as two examples of this category (“Are you laughing and sharing your positive feelings with your partner or, conversely, hiding your emotions?”). We therefore decided to include both strategies to represent this category.

Second, we have now included more information to justify the selection of the six strategies and to support their potential role on momentary affect (from line 198).

Besides, we have mentioned the lack of maladaptive strategies within the EMA assessment as a further limitation of the study (see response to comment 10) (from line 477). Finally, we have included the main findings of the studies suggested by the reviewer to further support the important emotional outcomes of positive emotion regulation (from line 95).

3. Researchers should justify their sample size of 85 undergraduates and their chosen time frame for the study (3 measurements a day for two weeks). There is no rationale for either. It also isn’t clear if they eliminated anyone due to not completing a minimum number of ESM assessments.

Thank you for raising these criticisms. Regarding the first issue, we decided the sample size by taking into account the sample sizes used in previous EMA studies on emotion regulation (see for example Pavani et al., 2015; Brans et al., 2013) (line 169). Regarding study design, we reviewed the past EMA literature to decide the best sampling frequency to adopt. However, no general rule was found, considering the incredibly huge variability among studies assessing ER through EMA protocols, ranging from once per day (see for example Nezlek et al. 2008) to ten times per day (see for example Kuppens et al. 2010). Because of the lack of shared guidelines, we decided to rely on the study by Heiy and colleagues (2015), which was used as a reference for the design of our study (especially for the ER items) and which for sure represents an important work within the field. Moreover, our previous studies adopting the same sampling frequency supports the feasibility of such design, which is reflected by the low burden and high compliance of participants (80.47%, Colombo et al., 2020a; 77.8%, Colombo et al., 2020b). Accordingly, more details about the selection of the sampling frequency have been included in the manuscript (from line 179).

Finally, we did not put a threshold on compliance levels in order to include or exclude participants. This information has been now included in the manuscript (line 182).

4. Were the emotion scales labeled (the 1 and 5 endpoints or each number)?

The endpoints of the Likert scales used to assess positive emotions were labelled (1=not at all; 5=a lot). We have now included this information in the manuscript (line 184).

5. The ER questions need additional details so the reader can understand what was done and why. Examples should be provided. What is “stimulus control” as a ER strategy?

We do completely agree that the selection of the strategies was not adequately detailed. As the reviewer will see, we have now clarified this issue. More specifically, and following reviewer#1 suggestion, we have now included an explanation of each ER category (attentional deployment, cognitive change, response modulation), which helped us introduce each of the positive strategy of our study. Furthermore, further references have been included in order to support their selection (from line 198).

Why are difference scores computed and what do Time 0 to Time 1 represent? (A little more information is given in the results, but it should be defined in the method given it is first mentioned there.)

In the revised manuscript, we have now included a clearer explanation about the change scores we calculated for each emotion regulation strategy (from line 229).

There are existing measures of positive emotion regulation in the literature so better explaining the benefits of these items may be helpful

Thank you for raising this point. As mentioned in the discussion, the use of single items to assess positive strategies might represent a criticism of the study. However, to the best of our knowledge, there aren’t validated items assessing state (e.g., momentary) positive regulation. The available questionnaires usually assess positive emotion regulation in a more general way (see for example the Response Style to Positive Affect Scale, which assesses emotion-focused or self-focused savoring; the Savoring Belief Inventory, which only explores savoring in terms of anticipating, experiencing or recalling positive states; or the Emotion Regulation Profile-Revised, which consists of narratives rather than items). Additionally, most of the available emotion regulation questionnaires relies on the idea that emotion regulation is a trait of a person, thus assessing emotion regulation as a cross-situational tendency. Only a few questionnaires have been developed to assess state emotion regulation (i.e., the momentary adoption of strategies in relation to a specific event, which would fit better with the use of EMA), but only in relation to negative emotions (see for example the Brief State Rumination Inventory, Marchetti et al., 2018; or the State Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale, Lavender et al., 2017). Finally, there is evidence showing that longer EMA questionnaires usually imply higher perceived burden and lower compliance to the experimental protocol, which further support our choice to use single items. Thus, integrating a full questionnaire of positive regulation in the EMA would have been counterproductive.

Broadly talking, the use of single items isn’t just a limitation of our study, but a very important issue of the EMA literature. Indeed, almost all EMA studies rely on the use of ad-hoc items, thus raising important issues regarding their construct validity. We acknowledge this criticism, and we recognise that there is the need to further expand this research field by creating validated measures to be used in momentary assessments. These efforts have been already made in other research fields. An example is the Distress Thermometer, a single measure which has been developed to assess “unpleasant experience of a mental, physical, social, or spiritual nature”. Similarly, validated items to assess emotion regulation should be created in the near future.

As the reviewer will see, we have tried to incorporate the aforementioned considerations in the manuscript and to better justify the use of single items (from line 484).

6. Descriptives for the emotion and ER rates should be provided (maybe in Table 1).

The descriptives for the emotions and ER rates have been included in Table 1, as suggested by the reviewer.

7. In Table 2, the notations to flag significant associations are included but they don’t actually use them in the table. Instead they write out the p-values. However, given the table is very hard to read, using asterisks is recommended.

Thank you for pointing out this mistake. We have now corrected the table by including the asterisks and deleting the p-values. We also modified the other tables, consistently.

8. Researchers tested additional hypotheses not outlined in the introduction. These should not take the reader by surprise, so these should be mentioned and justified earlier.

We completely agree with the reviewer. Indeed, the moderation of strategy category on the reciprocal influence between positive ER and PE was not mentioned among the hypotheses. We have now included it (from line 16\\).

9. The benefits of sharing positive experiences also depend on how the recipients respond to the news (Shelly Gable’s research). Therefore, recipients’ supportive v. less supportive responses may mitigate its positive effects sometimes.

This is a very interesting point, which further explains the results observed in relation to the use of social sharing. We have now included it in the discussion of the results (from line 448).

10. Additional limitations include not including maladaptive responses to PA (e.g., dampening) and negative affect. When people are lower on PA, do they also do more ineffective ER? It seems likely that they do not solely use the types of ER strategies that happened to be assessed here.

Thank you for the suggestion. We have now underlined the lack of items to assess maladaptive strategies and negative affect as two further limitations of the present study. Regarding the latter, one of the reviewers suggested that, the lack of measures about negative affect, does not allow to conclude that “upregulating PE may serve as a mechanism to repair mood and reduce the experience of unpleasant affective states”. Indeed, the fact that we only assessed momentary PE levels does not allow to fully comprehend the reciprocal influence between positive emotion regulation and momentary affect (both positive and negative). We therefore decided to move this statement to the limitations of the study. More specifically, we state that, despite the results might support the mood-repair theory, such conclusion can’t be confirmed because of the lack of information regarding momentary negative affect (from line 470).

11. There are many grammatical issues with this paper, so these would need to be corrected.

The manuscript has been edited by an English-speaking native in order to correct grammatical issues.

Submitted filename: Response to reviewers.docx

Click here for additional data file.

10 Feb 2021

PONE-D-20-28135R1

Savoring the present: The reciprocal influence between positive emotions and positive emotion regulation in everyday life

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Colombo,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

Reviewer 2 notes that although many of the issues raised in the last review were addressed, some still remain. As well this reviewer notes that additional issues have been introduced in making some of the revisions. The Reviewer has provided a very thoughtful and thorough list of these issues and detailed the areas needed for further improvement. Please read through these carefully and respond to each, and how or if you will address them in your revision cover letter.

Please submit your revised manuscript by Mar 27 2021 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.

A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.

An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Fuschia M. Sirois, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

**********

2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Partly

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: I Don't Know

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: The authors were somewhat responsive to earlier concerns. However, certain points were not addressed as expected or the changes resulted in new problems. Although I believe this paper has several strengths and could contribute to the literature, the remaining issues dampen my enthusiasm but could be addressed in the future.

Introduction

1. Terms are not defined in the introduction when first mentioned – capitalizing, savoring, AD, CC, RM. It doesn’t make sense to wait until the method to cite literature explaining what the strategies are and what they relate to.

2. Relatedly they do not justify the particular emotion regulation strategies that they focus on. Some of this text (justifying why these strategies would relate to more PE) is included in the discussion, but it would be helpful to have this information in the introduction and state they’re excluding maladaptive ER.

3. This sentence needs more explanation given this study doesn’t study mindfulness, self-esteem, and autonomy: “ Furthermore, intense use of mindfulness has been shown to predict higher levels of daily autonomy (24), whereas positive reappraisal has been associated with greater self-esteem and well-being (25).” Although there is a mindfulness type of item as ER, readers don’t know that until the method, so the sentence appears mostly unrelated.

Method and results

4. A major problem in the paper remains unclear description and treatment of ER strategies.

a. If the individual strategies are being collapsed into categories, why isn’t this done consistently? Some analyses examine ER as individual strategies (all 6) and others include combined strategies (AD, CC, RM) but there is no rationale for the switch back and forth.

b. The use of acronyms for AD, CC, and RM are confusing as they are not well known. Can these be written out?

c. It is not clear from Table 1 that authors are correlating scores that define other scores (e.g., expressing and sharing are RM, so that’s why the correlations are .90). This should be explained in a note or authors should pick one (either the aggregate or individual scores) and use one throughout the paper.

5. Do authors test for significant differences between strategy use? It is not clear based on how it is written and it’s not clear how much value this text adds.

6. Why is T1 PE controlled for when predicting ER strategies from PE T0? Authors should have a good rationale for including it and explain it in the paper (or instead not include it as a covariate).

7. Conversely, it seems that T0 PE should be included as a covariate when predicting PE T1 from ER. Was that done? Where all 8 strategies run in separate models? Why isn’t AD included in Tables 3 and 4 and corresponding analyses? More information should be included about the models testing these hypotheses, and potentially including analyses in a table given they are major findings of the paper.

8. The rationale for the analysis in Table 4 is not provided and the analyses and results are not clear. It is recommended these are removed or set up as a hypotheses and clarified. The authors said they added the analyses in Table 3 and 4 as hypotheses, but the one sentence added at the end of the introduction is not clear in terms of corresponding to Table 4.

Discussion

9. The description of some of the results is not summarized as clearly as it could. For example: “Interestingly, the tendency to adopt positive strategies to increase PE was less effective when using RM strategies (e.g., sharing and emotional expression).”

a. Was this difference significant? What was it less effective than?

10. In general, it is hard to see breaking of paragraphs, but it appears the last paragraph of the paper goes on for two pages. They should break it into two paragraphs (last 3 sentences could be on their own).

11. Several typos are present. For example:

a. Langstone instead of Langston

b. In the measures paragraphs there are multiple typos, and use of so many parentheses is very hard to follow.

**********

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Reviewer #2: No

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30 Mar 2021

Reviewer #1

The authors were somewhat responsive to earlier concerns. However, certain points were not addressed as expected or the changes resulted in new problems. Although I believe this paper has several strengths and could contribute to the literature, the remaining issues dampen my enthusiasm but could be addressed in the future.

We are very pleased to know that the reviewer believes that the manuscript might represent an important contribution. Also, we are very grateful for the insightful points outlined and we have enthusiastically tried to address all concerns. In our resubmitted manuscript, we have highlighted areas of substantive changes in yellow, so that the editor and the reviewer can easily identify them. Material that has been moved around from one place to another is in bolded green font.

Terms are not defined in the introduction when first mentioned – capitalizing, savoring, AD, CC, RM. It doesn’t make sense to wait until the method to cite literature explaining what the strategies are and what they relate to.

Thank you very much for the suggestion. We have now included in the manuscript the definitions of the terms mentioned by the reviewer (see for example line 66 or line 100). Furthermore, we have moved the literature supporting the six positive strategies from the methods to the introduction (from line 164). We do agree that it is more consistent to provide this information to the reader when introducing our study.

Relatedly they do not justify the particular emotion regulation strategies that they focus on. Some of this text (justifying why these strategies would relate to more PE) is included in the discussion, but it would be helpful to have this information in the introduction and state they’re excluding maladaptive ER.

We have now moved to the introduction the paragraphs justifying the selection of the six strategies and discussing their association with PE (“The current study”) (from line 164), and we have included a more detailed explanation about the rational used to select categories and strategies. Categories were selected based on the review by Quoidbach et al. (2015), who points out that “Regarding short-term increases in positive emotions, our review found that attentional deployment, cognitive change, and response modulation strategies have received the most empirical support, whereas more work is needed to establish the effectiveness of situation selection and situation modification strategies” (from line 153). Strategies were selected in order to explore these 3 categories of emotion regulation (two strategies for each category) and according to the literature supporting the association between these specific strategies and PE. Furthermore, and as suggested by the reviewer, in the introduction we have now underlined that maladaptive ER has not been investigated (lines 151-152). Besides, we also explain that, although people’s repertoire to deal with positive emotions is quite large, we only focused on a limited number of strategies in order to reduce participants’ burden and efforts to complete 3 daily EMA assessments (from line 147).

Finally, it is true that in the discussion we mention three further studies about the influence of positive regulation (more specifically, response modulation) on PE (58, 59, 60). However, these studies are very specific, and they are presented in the discussion in order to explain posteriori why response modulation strategies had a lesser influence on PE in our study.

This sentence needs more explanation given this study doesn’t study mindfulness, self-esteem, and autonomy: “ Furthermore, intense use of mindfulness has been shown to predict higher levels of daily autonomy (24), whereas positive reappraisal has been associated with greater self-esteem and well-being (25).” Although there is a mindfulness type of item as ER, readers don’t know that until the method, so the sentence appears mostly unrelated.

After stating that “The implementation of positive emotion regulation has been shown to be beneficial for mental health”, our aim was to provide some examples of positive strategies that have been found to be associated with higher well-being, such as counting blessings, capitalizing, mindfulness and positive reappraisal. As the reviewer will see, we have rephrased the paragraph in order to make our objective clearer for the reader (from line 93). We have also deleted the specific terms “self-esteem” and “autonomy”, as these constructs are not explored in our study and might be misleading for the reader.

A major problem in the paper remains unclear description and treatment of ER strategies. If the individual strategies are being collapsed into categories, why isn’t this done consistently? Some analyses examine ER as individual strategies (all 6) and others include combined strategies (AD, CC, RM) but there is no rationale for the switch back and forth.

We agree with the reviewer that this point was not enough clear in the manuscript. As explained in the previous comment, the rational used in this study was mainly based on the results of the review by Quoidbach et al., (2015), who found attentional deployment, cognitive change and response modulation to be more effective in increasing PE in the brief term. Starting from these 3 categories, we selected two strategies for each category based on the previous literature relating positive emotion regulation to positive emotions. This rational allowed us to explore the association between positive emotion regulation and positive emotions both at a strategy and category levels: In other words, not only the association between the use of 6 positive strategies and PE, but also the influence of strategy category on the experience positive emotional states (i.e., the intrinsic attentional, cognitive or behavioural nature of the strategies). We have now modified the manuscript in order to clarify this rational. As the reviewer will see, we have included a more detailed explanation of the strategies/categories in order to explore the association between positive emotion regulation and PE both at a strategy and category levels (from line 153), as well as a better elaboration of the 3 aims of the study (from line 197). Furthermore, the statistical analyses section has been improved in order to explicitly match each statistical step to the three aims of the study (lines 294-295; lines 309-310; lines 320-321).

The use of acronyms for AD, CC, and RM are confusing as they are not well known. Can these be written out?

We have now substituted acronyms with the entire name of each strategy category.

It is not clear from Table 1 that authors are correlating scores that define other scores (e.g., expressing and sharing are RM, so that’s why the correlations are .90). This should be explained in a note or authors should pick one (either the aggregate or individual scores) and use one throughout the paper.

Following the reviewer’s suggestion, we have improved the caption of Table 1 in order to include a note about how emotion regulation categories were calculated. We have also modified the table in order to emphasize and separate the two levels (strategy and categories). Furthermore, we have moved the EMA items from the methods to Table 1, in order to make the manuscript easier to read and reduce the use of parentheses, as suggested by the reviewer in the comment below.

Do authors test for significant differences between strategy use? It is not clear based on how it is written and it’s not clear how much value this text adds.

In the previous version of this manuscript, we did not test for significant differences between the mean use of our strategies of interest. The paragraph pointed by the reviewer was included only to display descriptive statistics. We added this paragraph to be consistent with previous studies on emotion regulation in everyday life, that contained such a paragraph. Nevertheless, as the reviewer suggested, this paragraph does not add enough value to our manuscript to be conserved. More specifically, this paragraph described statistics that are already easily accessible on Table 1. For this reason, rather than testing mean differences which is not very informative and valuable in relation to the aims of our study, we have decided to remove the paragraph.

Why is T1 PE controlled for when predicting ER strategies from PE T0? Authors should have a good rationale for including it and explain it in the paper (or instead not include it as a covariate).

The rational for including PE at t1 as a covariate was already described in the “statistical analyses” section. We have rephrased the sentence in order to make it clearer (lines 302-308). Not controlling for PE t1 could produce a biased estimation of the effect of PE t0 on subsequent strategies. As PE t1 was related to (1) PE t0 and (2) strategy changes from t0 to t1, it could represent a confounding variable when attempting to determine the specific relationship between PE t0 and strategy changes from t0 to t1. Therefore, to ensure that the effect of PE t0 on strategy changes from t0 to t1 was not actually explained by PE t1’s relationships with both variables, we controlled for PE t1.

Conversely, it seems that T0 PE should be included as a covariate when predicting PE T1 from ER. Was that done? Where all 8 strategies run in separate models?

PE at T0 was included as a covariate when predicting PE at T1 from ER, and the rational for including it was discussed in the “statistical analyses” section. We have underlined this part in the manuscript (lines 312: “PE at t0 was also included as a control variable to neutralize the so-called regression towards the mean effect”). In this case, we only ran one model containing change in the use of each strategy from t0 to t1 as independent variables to predict PE at T1. This information has been clarified in the manuscript (line 310). As the manuscript included a table to report the results of all the analyses performed, we have also included a table to report these results (table 3), which in the previous version of the manuscript were only reported in the text.

Why isn’t AD included in Tables 3 and 4 and corresponding analyses? More information should be included about the models testing these hypotheses, and potentially including analyses in a table given they are major findings of the paper.

The analyses reported in table 4 and table 5 explored the presence of a significant categorical (strategy category: attentional deployment, cognitive change, response modulation) by continuous (PE at t0 for table 4 and change in strategy intensity at t1 for table 5) interaction. A significant interaction means that the slope of the continuous variable is different for one or more levels of the categorical variable. Results are always to be interpreted in relation to the reference group, which in our case was attentional deployment (and that’s why attentional deployment is not reported). We have now modified the tables and included a note in the caption in order to clarify this point (from line 398).

The rationale for the analysis in Table 4 is not provided and the analyses and results are not clear. It is recommended these are removed or set up as a hypotheses and clarified. The authors said they added the analyses in Table 3 and 4 as hypotheses, but the one sentence added at the end of the introduction is not clear in terms of corresponding to Table 4.

Thank you for this suggestion. We have now included more details to describe the third objective of the study (that is, whether strategy category moderates the association between PE and positive emotion regulation) and we have explicitly mentioned that the moderating role of strategy category will be explored in both direction (lines 210-217): Strategy category as a moderator of the association between PE at t0 and positive regulation at t1 (which refers to the analyses reported in table 4); and strategy category as a moderator of the association between positive regulation at t0 and PE at t (which refers to the analyses reported in table 5). Also, we have modified the statistical analyses section in order to explicitly match the analyses conducted to explore the third aim of the study (from line 320).

The description of some of the results is not summarized as clearly as it could. For example: “Interestingly, the tendency to adopt positive strategies to increase PE was less effective when using RM strategies (e.g., sharing and emotional expression).” Was this difference significant? What was it less effective than?

The difference was statistically significant, as reported in the results section We have now revised this sentence in order to clarify the meaning and interpretation of this result (from line 471).

In general, it is hard to see breaking of paragraphs, but it appears the last paragraph of the paper goes on for two pages. They should break it into two paragraphs (last 3 sentences could be on their own).

The whole manuscript has been revised in order to make paragraphs more concise.

Several typos are present. For example: a. Langstone instead of Langston; b. In the measures paragraphs there are multiple typos, and use of so many parentheses is very hard to follow.

Thank you for pointing out the typos, we have now corrected them. Furthermore, the manuscript has been edited once more by an English-speaking native in order to correct grammatical issues.

Submitted filename: Response to reviewers_rev2.docx

Click here for additional data file.

29 Apr 2021

Savoring the present: The reciprocal influence between positive emotions and positive emotion regulation in everyday life

PONE-D-20-28135R2

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Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

**********

2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #2: Yes

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The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #2: Yes

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Reviewer #2: Authors addressed previous concerns and questions. As a result, the manuscript was clearer. Overall, the paper is interesting and it should make a contribution to the literature.

**********

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Reviewer #2: No

3 May 2021

PONE-D-20-28135R2

Savoring the Present: The Reciprocal Influence Between Positive Emotions and Positive Emotion Regulation in Everyday Life

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Table 1

Correlations between emotion regulation and PE at the within-individual level.

	M (SD)	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9
1. PE	2.77 (0.97)	1.00
STRATEGIES
2. Mindfulness: I’m trying to be focused on the present and concentrate on how good I feel	56.34 (27.06)	.538***	1.00
3. Stimulus control: I’m trying to avoid all negative thoughts and stressors in order to focus and make the most of my positive emotions	52.5 (28.89)	.400***	.556***	1.00
4. Broadening: I’m thinking about all the good things I have and that are happening in my life as well	51.65 (28.96)	.489***	.601***	.565***	1.00
5. Counting blessings: I’m thinking about how lucky I am to live in this moment and feel so good	51.35 (29.02)	.504***	.625***	.558***	.732***	1.00
6. Emotion expression: I’m trying to express and emphasize my emotions on the outside by showing them	46.95 (30.39)	.422***	.462***	.368***	.474***	.463***	1.00
7. Sharing: I’m sharing my positive emotions with other people, for example, with my friends, partner, and/or family	44.59 (31.98)	.406***	.422***	.377***	.468***	.452***	.630***	1.00
CATEGORIES
8. Attentional deployment	54.43 (25.93)	.520***	.854***	.891***	.646***	.650***	.454***	.444***	1.00
9. Cognitive change	51.51 (28.03)	.527***	.653***	.591***	.923***	.931***	.497***	.489***	.686***	1.00
10. Response modulation	45.81 (29.57)	.454***	.487***	.409***	.514***	.500***	.896***	.899***	.494***	.539***

*p < .05,

** p < .01,

***p < .001.

Means and standard deviations were computed on raw variables. Categories were obtained by averaging strategies in the following way: mindfulness and stimulus control for ‘attentional deployment’, broadening and counting blessings for ‘cognitive change’, and emotion expression and sharing for ‘response modulation’. (PE: Positive emotions).

Table 2

Results of the six linear mixed-effects models predicting change in strategy use from PE at t0.

	Change in Mindfulness		Change in Stimulus control		Change in Broadening		Change in Counting blessings		Change in Emotion expression		Change in Sharing
	b	SE	b	SE	b	SE	b	SE	b	SE	b	SE
FIXED EFFECTS
PE (t0)	-.16***	.023	-.11***	.025	-.075**	.023	-.124***	.023	-.065**	.025	-.069**	.025
Mindfulness (t0)	-.082**	.025	.038	.027	.054*	.026	.020	.026	.051	.027	.029	.028
Stimulus control (t0)	.012	.023	-.067**	.025	.043	.024	.024	.023	.004	.025	.029	.025
Broadening (t0)	.069*	.028	.024	.03	-.14***	.028	.096***	.028	.027	.031	.0097	.031
Counting blessings (t0)	.034	.028	.032	.031	.04	.029	-.124***	.029	-.019	.03	-.014	.031
Emotion expression (t0)	.038	.023	-.007	.025	.051*	.024	.025	.024	-.072**	.025	-018	.025
Sharing (t0)	.014	.023	.023	.025	-.016	.024	.027	.024	.054*	.025	-.034	.025
PE (t1)	.55***	.019	.40***	.02	.48***	.019	.502***	.019	.044***	.02	.041***	.025

*p < .05,

** p < .01,

***p < .001.

(PE: Positive emotions).

Table 3

Results of the linear mixed-effect model predicting PE at t1 from change in the use of each strategy at t0.

	PE (t1)
	b	SE	df	t
FIXED EFFECTS
Change in mindfulness	0.284***	0.024	2168	12.66
Change in stimulus control	0.046*	0.021	2168	2.12
Change in broadening	0.093***	0.026	2168	3.73
Change in counting blessings	0.125***	0.025	2168	4.87
Change in emotion expression	0.192***	0.022	2168	5.47
Change in sharing	0.093***	0.022	2168	4.27
PE (t0)	0.21***	0.016	2168	12.85

*p < .05, ** p < .01,

***p < .001.

(PE = positive emotions).

Table 4

Results of the linear mixed-effect model predicting the effect of positive emotions at t0 on change in strategy intensity at t1, moderated by strategy category.

	Change in use intensity (t1)
	b	SE	df	t
FIXED EFFECTS
PE (t0)	-.174***	.019	6546	-9.31
Cognitive change (vs. attentional deployment)	-.103***	.024	6546	-4.29
Response modulation (vs. attentional deployment)	-.283***	.025	6546	-11.53
Strategy intensity (t0)	-.010	.011	6546	-.91
PE (t1)	.464***	.011	6546	43.37
PE (t0) * Cognitive change (vs. attentional deployment)	.028	.025	6546	1.13
PE (t0) * Response modulation (vs. attentional deployment)	.045	.025	6546	1.83

*p < .05, ** p < .01,

***p < .001.

Attentional deployment represents the reference group. (PE: Positive emotions).

Table 5

Results of the linear mixed-effect model predicting the effect of change in strategy use intensity at t0 on PE at t1, moderated by strategy category.

	PE (t1)
	b	SE	df	t
FIXED EFFECTS
Change in use intensity (t1)	.564***	.021	6486.91	26.89
Cognitive change (vs. attentional deployment)	.058*	.025	6439.02	2.36
Response modulation (vs. attentional deployment)	.132***	.024	6440.36	5.33
PE (t0)	.252***	.01	6538.48	4.06
Change in use intensity (t1) * Cognitive change (vs. attentional deployment)	-.054	.029	6524.83	-1.89
Change in use intensity (t1) * Response modulation (vs. attentional deployment)	-.161***	.027	5933.7	-5.92

*p < .05, ** p < .01,

***p < .001.

Attentional deployment represents the reference group. (PE: Positive emotions).