Date of Award
2026
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy in Clinical Psychology
Department
Psychology
Committee Chair and Members
Philip Wong, Chair
Sara Haden
Elizabeth Kudadjie-Gyamfi
Keywords
Affect dynamics, Affective flexibility, Anger dynamics, Emotion regulation flexibility, Physiological responding, Resilience
Abstract
Resilience is an adaptive process, yet its specific mechanisms remain poorly understood. Theories of Emotion Regulation Flexibility (ERF) emphasize the importance of tailoring strategies to context, but empirical evidence linking trait-level flexibility in emotion regulation to real-time flexibility in emotional response is limited. This study examined the relationship between resilience, ERF, and moment-to-moment affective and physiological responding within a single context.
Young adults (N = 205) completed a laboratory-based anger induction (the Anger-Induced Ultimatum Game) while providing physiological data, Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia (RSA) and Skin Conductance Level (SCL). Continuous anger ratings were collected using video-mediated recall and then converted to quantify within-context affect dynamics, including instability, inertia, and recovery.
Whether ERF operates as a unitary latent construct or a multi-component construct was tested using a structural equation model. Results revealed that the components of ERF such as context sensitivity, repertoire, and feedback responsiveness are distinct and do not share a common underlying factor. Correlations revealed that resilience was associated with lower emotion regulation difficulties and greater feedback responsiveness but not with context sensitivity at the trait level. In the moment, greater resilience was significantly correlated with lower affect inertia. Physiologically, sympathetic and parasympathetic responses were in the expected direction but were not moderated by resilience. Crucially, trait-level ERF components did not directly link resilience to within-context affect dynamics; instead, general regulatory capacities (DERS) more consistently predicted these affect dynamics.
These findings suggest that adaptive emotional flexibility relies on both - variability in emotional responding and the regulation of those responses as they unfold over time. The results further highlight the importance of timescales, indicating that associations observed in longer-term or multi-context studies may not generalize to micro-timescale dynamics within a single emotional episode.
Recommended Citation
Sabharwa, Ranchal, "When flexibility is adaptive: exploring the relationship between resilience, emotion regulation flexibility, and affect dynamics in young adults" (2026). Selected Full-Text Dissertations 2020-. 79.
https://digitalcommons.liu.edu/brooklyn_fulltext_dis/79