Emotion Dysregulation in College Students: Contributions of Maladaptive Personality Traits and Momentary Affect

Emotion regulation involves behavioral modulation of emotional expression across contexts and is highly relevant to the experience of psychopathology. Maladaptive personality traits may be particularly relevant individual differences for understanding problems with emotion regulation, or dysregulation. Similarly, momentary variability in negative affect, which can be captured with greater precision via ecological momentary assessment (EMA) methods, may also be relevant for mapping how individual differences influence emotion dysregulation in real time. The present study investigated how emotion dysregulation is affected by maladaptive personality and negative affect among college students. Data were collected between September 2019 and September 2021, as part of a larger study on emotional functioning and social media use. Of the full baseline sample (N=405), 154 students (Mage = 18.7), who were predominately women (72.7%) and White (80.5%), completed 28 EMA surveys over seven days. Path analysis revealed that all maladaptive personality traits except antagonism uniquely predicted multiple dimensions of dysregulation, with negative affectivity observed as the strongest trait predictor. Multilevel models demonstrated that both increased between- and within-person variability in negative affect were associated with increased overall levels of momentary dysregulation. Further, increased fluctuations in negative affect were associated with greater fluctuations in momentary dysregulation. These associations were significantly moderated by higher mean-levels of negative affect but not by any of the maladaptive traits. This study’s findings highlight notable differences in state and trait level predictors of dysregulation and contribute to the understanding of how such antecedents could be used in the development of treatment like just-in-time interventions.