0000000000614310

AUTHOR

Zarah Rowland

A round peg in a square hole: strategy-situation fit of intra- and interpersonal emotion regulation strategies and controllability

Although the importance of contextual factors is often recognised, research on emotion regulation strategies (ERS) has mainly focused so far on the effectiveness of ERS across situations. In the present research, we tested the strategy-situation fit hypothesis, which does not assume general effectiveness of ERS but instead stresses the importance of the congruency between ERS and the contexts in which they are used. Using a longitudinal Ambulatory Assessment dataset (

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Let There be Variance: Individual Differences in Consecutive Self–Control in A Laboratory Setting and Daily Life

The large body of research used to support ego–depletion effects is currently faced with conceptual and replication issues, leading to doubt over the extent or even existence of the ego–depletion effect. By using within–person designs in a laboratory (Study 1; 187 participants) and an ambulatory assessment study (Study 2; 125 participants), we sought to clarify this ambiguity by investigating whether prominent situational variables (such as motivation and affect) or personality traits can help elucidate when ego depletion can be observed and when not. Although only marginal ego–depletion effects were found in both studies, these effects varied considerably between individuals, indicating t…

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Self-Control Dynamics in Daily Life: The Importance of Variability Between Self-Regulatory Strategies and Strategy Differentiation

Research on self-control has increasingly acknowledged the importance of self-regulatory strategies, with strategies in earlier stages of the developing tempting impulse thought to be more effective than strategies in later stages. However, recent research on emotion regulation has moved away from assuming that some strategies are per se and across situations more adaptive than others. Instead, strategy use that is variable to fit situational demands is considered more adaptive. In the present research, we transfer this dynamic process perspective to self-regulatory strategies in the context of persistence conflicts. We investigated eight indicators of strategy use (i.e., strategy intensit…

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Relationship satisfaction can help to maintain the positive effect of childbirth on parental self-esteem

The transition to parenthood is accompanied by declined self-esteem levels, which may be explained by parents’ relationship satisfaction. However, prior research examined self-esteem only shortly before and after childbirth and had no or only unmatched childless respondents as a control group, limiting the possibility to examine long-term adaptive processes and the causal interpretation of the associations. Thus, we used panel data (10 years, 4,075 individuals, and 16,122 observations) to compare self-esteem and relationship satisfaction trajectories of parents with matched childless respondents using propensity score matching. We found a quadratic trajectory for parents’ self-esteem, whic…

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Supplemental Material, Supplementary_Materials(SPP) - Relationship Satisfaction Can Help to Maintain the Positive Effect of Childbirth on Parental Self-Esteem

Supplemental Material, Supplementary_Materials(SPP) for Relationship Satisfaction Can Help to Maintain the Positive Effect of Childbirth on Parental Self-Esteem by Mario Wenzel, Doris Staab, Zarah Rowland and Manon A. van Scheppingen in Social Psychological and Personality Science

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The Limits of Ego Depletion

Abstract. Evidence on the existence of the ego depletion phenomena as well as the size of the effects and potential moderators and mediators are ambiguous. Building on a crossover design that enables superior statistical power within a single study, we investigated the robustness of the ego depletion effect between and within subjects and moderating and mediating influences of the ego depletion manipulation checks. Our results, based on a sample of 187 participants, demonstrated that (a) the between- and within-subject ego depletion effects only had negligible effect sizes and that there was (b) large interindividual variability that (c) could not be explained by differences in ego depleti…

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Supporting info item, per2208-sup-0001_PER_Open_Practices_Disclosure_Form - Let There be Variance: Individual Differences in Consecutive Self–Control in A Laboratory Setting and Daily Life

Supporting info item, per2208-sup-0001_PER_Open_Practices_Disclosure_Form for Let There be Variance: Individual Differences in Consecutive Self–Control in A Laboratory Setting and Daily Life by Wenzel Mario, Rowland Zarah, Zahn Daniela, Kubiak Thomas and Carlson Erika in European Journal of Personality

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The effects of computer-based mindfulness training on Self-control and Mindfulness within Ambulatorily assessed network Systems across Health-related domains in a healthy student population (SMASH): study protocol for a randomized controlled trial

Background Self-control is an important ability in everyday life, showing associations with health-related outcomes. The aim of the Self-control and Mindfulness within Ambulatorily assessed network Systems across Health-related domains (SMASH) study is twofold: first, the effectiveness of a computer-based mindfulness training will be evaluated in a randomized controlled trial. Second, the SMASH study implements a novel network approach in order to investigate complex temporal interdependencies of self-control networks across several domains. Methods The SMASH study is a two-armed, 6-week, non-blinded randomized controlled trial that combines seven weekly laboratory meetings and 40 days of e…

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Like clouds in a windy sky : mindfulness training reduces negative affect reactivity in daily life in a randomized controlled trial

While prior research has found mindfulness to be linked with emotional responses to events, less is known about this effect in a non-clinical sample. Even less is known regarding the mechanisms of the underlying processes: It is unclear whether participants who exhibit increased acceptance show decreased emotional reactivity (i.e., lower affective responses towards events overall) or a speedier emotional recovery (i.e., subsequent decrease in negative affect) due to adopting an accepting stance. To address these questions, we re-analysed two Ambulatory Assessment data sets. The first (NStudy1 = 125) was a 6-week randomized controlled trial (including a 40-day ambulatory assessment); the sec…

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Setbacks in Self-Control: Failing Not Mere Resisting Impairs Subsequent Self-Control

Research on ego depletion has often relied on the dual-task setting employing short tasks with low ecological validity. The comparatively few studies on ego depletion in daily life so far used diverging operationalization and yielded ambiguous results. We argue that fundamental research on short-term self-control limitations can benefit from research on the limit violation effect, which highlights the danger to self-control when setbacks are attributed to internal causes. To test the role of setbacks and compare different ego depletion operationalizations in daily life, we used data from two ambulatory assessment studies ( N = 125 and 205). No consistent ego depletion effects were observed…

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Examining five pathways on how self-control is associated with emotion regulation and affective well-being in daily life.

OBJECTIVE Self-control is positively connected to well-being, but less is known about what, on the mechanistic level, explains this association. We hypothesized five pathways how this connection could be explained by emotion regulation, that is, by facilitating (a) strategy effectiveness, (b), adaptive strategy selection, (c) situation selection, (d) strategy variability, or (e) social sharing. METHOD To explore these pathways, we integrated two ambulatory assessment data sets (N = 250 participants, N = 22,796 observations) that included assessments of participants' emotions and their emotion regulation efforts. RESULTS We found that self-control was positively associated with affective wel…

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How mindfulness shapes the situational use of emotion regulation strategies in daily life.

Mindfulness is associated with a wide range of beneficial outcomes such as well-being. However, less is known about the mechanisms underlying these benefits. Some researchers suggest that the benefits could be driven by emotion regulation, either by improving the effectiveness of emotion regulation or by lessening the need for effortful emotion regulation. By using two longitudinal Ambulatory Assessment data sets (

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