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Emotion dysregulation is central to psychopathological conditions, including borderline personality disorder (BPD) and depression. However, the nature of emotion-regulation (ER) difficulties in the daily life of people with BPD or depressive features is still unclear. Therefore, in this study, we aimed to disentangle two different ER subprocesses in daily life, (a) selection of ER strategies and (b) the effectiveness of implementing strategies, in terms of their associations with subsequent emotional experience. We analyzed data from a three-wave, longitudinal, experience-sampling study of young adults with varying levels of psychopathological features (N= 202). BPD features were uniquely linked to the use but not altered effectiveness of several putatively adaptive and maladaptive ER strategies. Depressive features were uniquely associated with the use of putatively maladaptive strategies. These findings suggest that ER deficits in people with more BPD or depressive features may be primarily located in strategy selection rather than the implementation of those strategies.

Patterns of emotional change in daily life have been consistently linked to depressive and borderline personality disorder (BPD) features. However, dynamic measures and average affect show considerable statistical overlap, and depressive and BPD features are comorbid. Moreover, the prospective nature of these relationships is unclear. We used a measurement burst design in which 202 young adults with varying levels of psychopathological features participated in a week-long experience sampling at baseline and 1-year follow-up. Taking overlap into account, we found that BPD traits were uniquely and specifically linked to higher levels of variability in negative affect (NA). For depressive features, indications were found for a specific association with inertia of NA, but these results were not robust and consistent. In fact, overall, incremental predictive power of the dynamic measures above mean affect was limited, especially for depressive features. Prospective relationships showed that psychopathological features predicted stronger emotion dynamic patterns 1 year later rather than the other way around.

Across 50 years of research, extensive efforts have been made to improve the effectiveness of psychotherapies for children and adolescents. Yet recent evidence shows no significant improvement in youth psychotherapy outcomes. In other words, efforts to improve the general quality of therapy models do not appear to have translated directly into improved outcomes. We used multilevel meta-analytic data from 502 randomized controlled trials to generate a bivariate copula model predicting effect size as therapy quality approaches infinity. Our results suggest that even with a therapy of perfect quality, achieved effect sizes may be modest. If therapy quality and therapy outcome share a correlation of .20 (a somewhat optimistic assumption given the evidence we review), a therapy of perfect quality would produce an effect size of Hedges’s g= 0.83. We suggest that youth psychotherapy researchers complement their efforts to improve psychotherapy quality by investigating additional strategies for improving outcomes.

Interpersonal theories of depression postulate that depressed individuals’ experience of social isolation is attributable, in part, to their tendency to behave in ways that elicit rejection from others. Depression contagion has been implicated as a factor that may account for the rejection of depressed individuals. In the current study, we revisit this hypothesis by using a controlled, but realistically motivated, setting: speed dating. Approximately 2 weeks before the speed-dating event, participants’ depression levels were assessed. During the event, participants had 4-min “dates” with opposite-sex partners. After each date, they responded to items that measured their affect and romantic attraction. At the end of the evening, participants indicated which partners they wanted to see again. Our results did not support depression contagion: After 4 min of interaction with partners with high levels of depressive symptoms, participants did not experience increased negative affect; instead, they experienced reduced positive affect, which led to the rejection of these partners.