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Emotion regulation ability (ERA) enables individuals to disengage from negative stimuli. In this study, we investigated the role of ERA in the depression-related negativity bias. Seventy-four individuals with major depressive disorder and eighty-three nonclinical individuals were screened for depressiveness using the Beck Depression Inventory. ERA was assessed using the Action Orientation After Failure Subscale of the Action Control Scale. We used a classical Stroop task variant, wherein the color words were preceded by either a self-relevant positive (success-related), negative (failure-related), or neutral word prime. The expected depressiveness × emotional prime interaction did not reach significance but the expected ERA × emotional prime interaction did. The latter effect was qualified by a three-way interaction between ERA, depressiveness, and emotional prime. Specifically, ERA predicted the negativity bias in individuals with high depressiveness scores. Using the Johnson–Neyman technique, we found that this effect was significant at the level of mild to moderate depression and beyond. Thus, poor ERA in individuals with depression may cause the depression-related negativity bias, whereas (at least) moderate ERA may protect individuals with depression from this bias. Future studies should assess ERA in individuals with depressive symptomatology and investigate how it influences their everyday functioning and treatment outcomes.

The recent outbreak of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) has plunged countries across the world into crisis. Both in the general population and in specific subgroups such as infected people or health care workers, studies have reported increased symptoms of anxiety, depression and stress. However, the reactions of individuals with mental disorders to Covid-19 have largely been neglected. The present study therefore aimed to investigate the perceived impact of Covid-19 and its psychological consequences on people with mental disorders. In this online survey, participants were asked to evaluate their disorder-specific symptoms, perceived psychosocial stress and behaviors related to Covid-19 in the current situation and retrospectively before the spread of Covid-19. The study included participants with self-identified generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), panic disorder and agoraphobia (PA), illness anxiety disorder (IA), social anxiety disorder (SAD), depression (DP), obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD), body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), eating disorders (ED), schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders (SP), other non-specified mental disorder (other) as well as mentally healthy controls (HC). The results of bayesian parameter estimation suggest that the symptom severity of DP, GAD, IA and BDD has deteriorated as a reaction to Covid-19. Across all mental disorders and HC, self-reported psychosocial stress levels were higher during the outbreak of Covid-19 compared to before. A reduced frequency of social contacts and grocery shopping was found for all participants. People with self-identified mental disorders showed higher personal worries about Covid-19 and a higher fear of contagion with Covid-19 than did HC. According to our findings, Covid-19 may reinforce symptom severity and psychosocial stress in individuals with mental disorders. In times of pandemics, special support is needed to assist people with mental disorders and to prevent symptom deterioration.

ObjectiveFindings on the relationship between hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) activity and cognitive performance are inconsistent. We investigated whether personality in terms of emotion regulation abilities (ERA) moderates the relationship between stress-contingent HPA activity and accuracy of intuitive coherence judgments.MethodERA and cortisol responses to social-evaluative stress as induced by a variant of the Trier Social Stress Test were measured in N = 49 participants (32 female, aged 18 to 33 years, M = 22.48, SD = 3.33). Subsequently, in a Remote Associates Task they provided intuitive judgments on whether word triples, primed by either stress-reminding or neutral words, are coherent or not.ResultsUnder relative cortisol increase participants low in ERA showed reduced performance whereas individuals high in ERA showed increased performance. By contrast, under conditions of low cortisol change, individuals low in ERA outperformed those high in ERA.ConclusionPersonality can moderate the link between stress and cognition such as accurate intuition. This can happen to a degree that existing effects may not be become apparent in the main effect (i.e. without considering personality), which highlights the necessity to consider personality in stress research, ERA in particular. We discuss the findings with respect to individual differences in neurobehavioral mechanisms potentially underlying ERA and corresponding interactions with cognitive processing.