King, Kevin MFeil, Madison Claire2022-09-232022-09-232022-09-232022Feil_washington_0250E_24756.pdfhttp://hdl.handle.net/1773/49441Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2022A primary function of emotion is to motivate behavior and dysregulated emotion-behavior associations are central to many theories of psychopathology. Despite robust between-person associations between emotional and behavioral disturbances, results from studies examining state-level associations between real-life emotion and behavioral outcomes have been more mixed. Recent conceptualizations of emotion processes suggest that an individual’s interpretation of their emotion state influences their behavioral responses: a phenomenon that has been studied primarily within the framework of trait-like emotion beliefs. Emotion beliefs are thought to manifest in the moment as emotion appraisals that drive emotion regulation motivation and direct strategy selection. However, these state-level emotion appraisals are not well understood and many of these process-level hypotheses have not been tested in an ecologically valid context.The current study sought to address these gaps by providing preliminary psychometric information on measures of emotion regulation (ER) importance and ER self-efficacy appraisals, and by testing basic hypotheses as to how these appraisals impact regulatory behaviors in day-to-day life. 123 undergraduates (age 18-20) completed eight days of ecological momentary assessment (EMA) in which they were asked about their mood, emotion appraisals, and emotion regulation behaviors 5 times per day. Between- and within-person effects of momentary ER importance and self-efficacy appraisals on different emotion regulation outcomes were tested using multi-level Poisson and logistic regression models. Results suggested that single-item EMA measures of ER importance and self-efficacy appraisals capture important between- and within-person variance, and that they relate to other measures at both the EMA and person-level average levels largely as expected. Momentary ER importance predicted an individual’s typical levels of engagement and disengagement ER strategies, as well as momentary increases in the use of both. However, average levels of ER use were better explained by covariance with negative emotionality. Lower average ER self-efficacy appraisals were associated with the use of more disengagement ER across situations, though this effect was also better explained by covariance with negative emotionality. Momentary ER self-efficacy appraisals did not predict any ER outcomes, nor was there evidence of the proposed interaction between importance and self-efficacy appraisals. These findings give support for process-oriented theories of emotion regulation that posit that ER importance appraisals are more proximal to emotion-motivated behaviors than the emotions themselves. However, I did not find support for the theory that momentary self-efficacy appraisals play a strong role in directing ER behaviors. Perhaps more importantly, the findings from this study demonstrate a valuable proof-of-concept for the integration of momentary appraisals into EMA research on emotion-behavior associations. Further integration of these constructs into existing process models of psychopathology has the potential to meaningfully impact future research and intervention.application/pdfen-USnoneAppraisalsEcological Momentary AssessmentEmotionEmotion RegulationPsychologyClinical psychologyPsychologyThesis