This study examined emotion reactivity and recovery (as a proxy for emotion regulation) across negative (sadness, fear) and positive (happiness) emotional contexts in 110 adolescents aged 12–18 (Mage = 13.60; 65.5% girls), using self-report and respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) during a laboratory film-based task.
Higher depressive symptoms correlated with heightened self-reported negative emotion across all emotion conditions, but not with reduced positive emotion. Multilevel analyses found no significant interactions between depressive symptoms and emotion reactivity or recovery for either self-reported emotion or RSA. RSA increased during sadness induction and during recovery from fear, which was unexpected.
- Sample was community-based with a narrow, subclinical range of depressive symptoms, limiting generalizability to clinical populations. - Positive emotion was not sustained after the positive film induction, raising questions about the effectiveness of the happiness manipulation at the physiological level. - RSA findings diverged from self-report findings, and respiration was not fully controlled, which may affect RSA interpretation.
Adolescents with higher depressive symptoms show elevated negative emotion reactivity across multiple emotional contexts, but this study does not yet support targeting positive emotion regulation as a distinct clinical lever. Replication in clinical samples is needed before these findings change practice.
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