Studying Emotion Regulation with Daily Diaries and Ecological Momentary Assessment

Emotion regulation is inherently dynamic, unfolding iteratively over time and in reciprocal relation with other psychological processes. This makes emotion regulation a prime candidate for study using daily life methods--also known as ambulatory assessment or intensive longitudinal methods--which involve frequent active (e.g., via self-report) or passive (e.g., via sensors) sampling of experience, context, behavior, or physiology over time in naturalistic settings. In this chapter, we focus on the application of active self-report methods—i.e., ecological momentary assessment (EMA), the experience sampling method (ESM), and daily diaries—to the study of emotion regulation processes in daily life, which have grown rapidly in popularity over recent years. We hope to help readers navigate this burgeoning literature. We start with a brief overview of the “nuts and bolts” of using daily life methods to study emotion regulation. Next, we turn to motivating why researchers should bother using these methods by highlighting their key strengths. We then provide an overview of three key research questions that have been addressed using these methods, including empirical examples. Next, we propose a unified approach to jointly addressing these research questions using daily life data. And we end with a brief discussion of some challenges facing researchers investigating emotion regulation in daily life.