Being able to control emotions is associated with better mental health, well-being, and psychosocial functioning (De Castella et al., 2013; Bonanno & Burton, 2013; Aldao & Nolen-Hoeksema, 2010, 2012). Research has shown that emotion control beliefs (the extent to which one believes emotions are fixed or can be changed) influence choices of specific emotion regulation strategies, such as reappraisal (Kneeland et al., 2016b). As part of a larger study on the predictors of emotion regulation in everyday life, I assessed the role of emotion control beliefs in the choice of several emotion regulation strategies across multiple events over multiple days. Ninety-seven participants completed a questionnaire assessing malleability beliefs before responding to 7-10 days of assessments on their mobile device (up to 6 assessments a day). Each assessment comprised 30 items, including items assessing how much participants engaged in each of eight emotion regulation strategies in response to a recent negative event. I found no overall associations between emotion control beliefs and the use of adaptive and maladaptive strategies. I failed to replicate previous findings of an association between emotion control beliefs and reappraisal and cognitive change. Analyses of individual strategies indicated that the more participants believed they could change their emotions, the more likely they were to use distraction and the less likely they were to use learned helplessness. These findings highlight the importance of considering how emotion control beliefs interact with other predictors to predict emotion regulation.
