Emotion Regulation Flexibility and Tendency Differentially Predict Mental Health Across Cultures

Why do some individuals maintain mental health under emotional challenges, while others experience distress? Research highlights the critical role of both tendency and flexibility in emotion regulation. Yet their relative contributions to mental health remain unclear. We investigated this question using ecological momentary assessment in China (N = 241; 5,472 observations) and Germany (N = 257; 8,639 observations). In both cultures, greater tendencies to ruminate or suppress emotions predicted more psychopathological symptoms, whereas both tendency and flexibility of acceptance predicted fewer. However, the relative contributions of tendency and flexibility differed by culture: tendency explained more variance in China, while flexibility played a larger role in Germany. These findings suggest that both tendency and flexibility of emotion regulation contribute to mental health, but their importance may be culturally contingent. This highlights the need for culturally informed models and interventions in emotion regulation that account for both stable tendencies and dynamic flexibility.