Tammy English
Biographic Data
| ID | 759590 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Tammy English |
| GIVEN NAMES | Tammy |
| FAMILY NAME | English |
| SIGNATURE | ENGLISH T |
| AFFILIATIONS | Washington University in St. Louis |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6666-4780 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 47 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 111 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 47 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
To Regulate or Not to Regulate? Situational and Individual Differences in Emotion Regulation Initiation in Daily Life
Situational and individual differences shape how and why people regulate emotions, but whether emotion regulation is initiated remains understudied. We hypothesize that, for example, less familiar situations might be associated with more regulation initiation, and people who believe emotions are controllable initiate regulation more frequently. Using experience sampling ( N = 216; 7x/14 days), we found that participants initiated regulation 60% o…
Fluid and crystallized cognitive abilities differentially predict successful regulation of positive versus negative emotion
Emotion regulation (ER) is thought to rely on cognitive resources, with prior work identifying positive associations between both fluid and crystallized cognitive ability and successful ER. While emotional well-being tends to improve with age throughout adulthood, it is less clear whether ER improves, particularly in contexts involving unavoidable negative stimuli. In the present study, age-diverse community participants ( N = 286, age 25-85) com…
Looking beyond the means and into momentary context: Associations between momentary affect and emotion regulation strategy use in major depressive disorder
People with major depressive disorder (MDD) experience difficulties in emotion regulation (ER). Most ER research has examined overall strategy use using global self-reports in MDD, but this approach does not capture people's ER strategy use in daily life in the context of continuously changing ER demands, such as momentary affect. Taking a naturalistic approach, we investigated whether the associations between the use of six ER strategies (social…
Extrinsic emotion regulation motives in dyads of friends
Due to the central role friendships play in young adulthood, it is crucial to understand factors that help foster high-quality bonds. The present study examined associations between extrinsic emotion regulation motives and relationship quality in friendship dyads. A sample of 105 young adult dyads ( N = 210; M age = 19.5 years, SD age = 1.2 years) completed a survey assessing their motives for engaging in extrinsic emotion regulation with each ot…
How might interpersonal emotion regulation shape well-being? A naturalistic investigation of its link to subsequent affect and intrinsic emotion regulation
Intrinsic interpersonal emotion regulation (IER; the process of using others' help to regulate one's own emotions) is an important form of emotion regulation (ER) that has implications for everyday well-being. To further clarify how IER shapes well-being, we investigated how intrinsic IER predicts one's subsequent affect and ER efforts among 215 adults, with and without major depressive disorder, a disorder characterized by ER deficits. Via 2 wee…
Couples’ perceptions of interpersonal emotion regulation receipt and provision predict well-being across adulthood
Findings suggest that both receiving and providing interpersonal emotion regulation support are central to couples' well-being across the lifespan. This study provides preliminary evidence that partner perceptions of support exchanges may become increasingly important for well-being throughout adulthood
Emotion Dynamics in Young and Cognitively Diverse Older Adults
Objectives Prior work has demonstrated age-related increases in emotional well-being and emotional stability. However, little is known about the specific patterns of emotion across daily situations for older adults experiencing mild cognitive impairment (MCI) compared with cognitively normal (CN) older adults and their younger counterparts. Methods Young adults (aged 21–34, n = 70), CN older adults (aged 70–83, n = 89), and older adults with MCI …
How Often and Why Do People Manage Their Emotions in Older Adulthood
Objectives Prominent theories of adult development suggest individuals increasingly prioritize emotional goals and social relationships as they age. Accordingly, older adults are expected to invest more in maintaining their emotional well-being compared with younger adults. Prior work suggests older adults may accomplish this goal by structuring their lives in ways that reduce the need to actively manage unwanted emotion. We tested the hypotheses…
Sense of purpose fluctuations in daily life: A study of young adults and cognitively diverse older adults
The current work uses ecological momentary assessment data in an age and cognitively diverse group of adults to explore if, when, and why individuals feel purposeful in daily life. Seven times per day for 9 days, young adults (age: M = 27.36; 51.4% men, 47.1% women, 1.4% additional gender; 7.0% Asian/Asian American, 28.6% as Black/African American, 1.4% as Indigenous, 5.7% as Latine/Hispanic, 1.4% Middle Eastern, 58.6% White/European American), o…
Social interactions and loneliness in daily life: A study of younger adults and cognitively diverse older adults
Feeling lonely is a common experience across the lifespan and people's feelings of loneliness often do not correspond with their levels of social interaction in expected ways (i.e., social asymmetry). It is unclear, however, whether loneliness in daily life differs by age or cognitive status and how loneliness varies as a function of social interaction across age and cognitive status. The present research used experience sampling to investigate g…
Perceived demands associated with emotion regulation strategies among young and cognitively diverse older adults
60) reported perceived demands and use of ten ER strategies. As expected, early-acting strategies (e.g. situation selection) were generally viewed as less demanding than later-acting strategies (e.g. masking). Younger adults reported higher cognitive demands and effort requirements compared with CN older adults. For younger adults and CN older adults (but not those with MCI), strategies perceived as less demanding were used more. Older (but not y…
Positive peripheral social partners: Relationship and social interaction evaluations across adulthood
Older adults are theorized to prioritize relationships with close social partners who support their emotional goals. Throughout the lifespan, social partners of varying closeness may play different roles in one's emotional life. We investigate the relationship between age, social closeness, and social partner evaluations at relationship and social interaction levels. Participants aged 25-85 ( N = 309) completed social network questionnaires with …
Momentary savoring in daily life in an adult life-span sample
Savoring moments can foster well-being. Older adults are theorized to prioritize emotional well-being in daily life, which directs their attention to positive aspects of life. In this study, with data collected from 2018 to 2021, 285 adults aged 25-85 completed an experience sampling procedure (six times a day for 10 days) where they reported their experienced emotions, whether they were savoring the moment, and how close they felt to their most …
Intrinsic interpersonal emotion regulation strategy use and effectiveness across adulthood: The role of interaction partner age
One way older adults may be able to maintain emotional well-being despite declining in cognitive ability is through leveraging social resources for intrinsic interpersonal emotion regulation. Additionally, given their increased life experience, older adults might also be particularly well-suited to regulate the emotions of others. To examine age difference in use and effectiveness of intrinsic interpersonal emotion regulation, community adults ( …
Links Between Daily Life and Laboratory Emotion Regulation Processes: The Role of Age and Cognitive Status
Cognitively normal older adults may be better able to leverage their ER experience in novel contexts than younger adults. Older adults with MCI may be motivated to manage their emotions but experience more ER difficulty, perhaps in part due to reliance on default strategies
Effects of regulating emotional expression on authenticity and likeability in stranger dyads
The present study compares effects of expressive suppression to a less researched form of expression-focused emotion regulation (namely, amplification) in terms of impact on authenticity and socioemotional outcomes. We expected amplification to result in more positive outcomes than suppression because of its role in facilitating communication. Participants ( N = 306) formed 153 previously unacquainted dyads and were randomly assigned to a suppres…
Perceived responses, capitalization, and daily gratitude: Do age and closeness matter
Successful capitalization and feelings of gratitude are both dependent upon perceived responsiveness of a social partner, but they are understudied in combination and have yet to be studied jointly in a daily context. Taking a new approach to studying capitalization, the current study examines the effect of daily capitalization on momentary gratitude and investigates the role of the capitalizer's typical perceived responses to capitalization atte…
Examining situational differences in momentary emotion differentiation and emotional clarity in everyday life
People experience momentary fluctuations in how much they differentiate between emotions and how clear they are about what they are feeling. To better understand situational predictors of shifts in emotion differentiation and emotional clarity, we investigated whether individuals are more differentiated and clearer about their emotions in social situations (vs. alone) given that emotions fulfill important social functions. We tested if these with…
Age and Cognitive Ability Predict Emotion Regulation Strategy Use
Patterns of emotion regulation strategy use varied by age, even when accounting for differences in reactivity. Findings suggest that older adults may not necessarily prefer strategies that are lower in cognitive demands or that focus on enhancing positivity. Results support the idea that strategy preferences are driven by a combination of characteristics of the regulator and the regulation context. The relevance of cognitive resources likely vari…
Age, Resources, and Emotion Regulation Need in Daily-Life Emotional Contexts
Findings suggest that younger age and lower levels of cognitive ability are linked to less perceived need to regulate negative emotional states. Physical vulnerabilities also may dampen the perceived need for regulating high-arousal negative emotions, but only among older adults. Age-related shifts in resources and emotional goals may influence the likelihood that individuals are motivated to engage in ER, as well as the effectiveness of those ef…
Putting the emotion regulation process into person-specific context: An experience sampling and mobile sensing study
The impact of suppressing and amplifying expressions on personality judgments
Always in flux: The role of attentional focus in emotion regulation dynamics
Flexible emotion regulation (ER) in response to contextual changes is important for well-being. However, little is known about predictors of ER dynamics or their consequences. We investigated these questions in 113 romantic couples by priming self-, partner-, or relationship-focus in one partner prior to a 10-min conflict discussion. Afterwards, participants reported their ER using a video-recall task, and independent coders rated participants' a…
Adult attachment and interpersonal emotion regulation motives in daily life
Interpersonal goals and adult attachment have implications for how people interact with others as well as for emotion experience and regulation. Literature on intrapersonal emotional processes has typically not examined motivations underlying people's engagement with others' emotions and its connections to individual differences related to close relationships such as attachment. This study analyzed the relationships between interpersonal emotion …
Fluid and crystallized cognitive resources differentially linked to emotion regulation success in adulthood
Effective emotion regulation (ER) is theorized to require cognitive resources. Past work has identified inconsistent relationships between cognitive ability and ER success and has focused on implementation of instructed ER strategies. In the present study, we examine a wide range of cognitive abilities as predictors of ER success in the absence of constraints on strategy selection. An age-diverse sample of participants ( N = 129, age 25-83) compl…
Culture and self-concept stability: Consistency across and within contexts among Asian Americans and European Americans
Whereas prior cultural research has focused on consistency of self-descriptions across contexts, the current 4 studies examined cultural differences in consistency of multiple self-dimensions and did so both across and within different contexts. Supporting predictions, Study 1a found that Asian Americans were less consistent in their self-descriptions across relationship contexts than were European Americans. Yet Study 1b, a short-term longitudin…
Emotional suppression in early marriage: Actor, partner, and similarity effects on marital quality
Although habitual use of suppression has been consistently linked to adverse consequences for overall social functioning, little is known about the implications of using this emotion regulation strategy in the context of romantic relationships. The current longitudinal study tests whether husbands' and wives' habitual use of suppression, as well as couple similarity in the use of this strategy, influence marital quality over the first couple of y…
Age differences in emotion regulation strategy use, variability, and flexibility: An experience sampling approach
Life span developmental theories suggest that as individuals age, they accumulate knowledge about how to deploy emotion regulation (ER) strategies effectively and learn how to match their ER strategy use with changes in situational demands. Using an event-contingent experience sampling design wherein 150 adults Age 18 to 89 years reported on 64,213 social interactions (M = 427.41, SD = 145.66) during 9 weeks of daily life, this study examines (a)…
Emotion regulation and peer-rated social functioning: A 4-year longitudinal study
Emotion Regulation in Adolescence: A Prospective Study of Expressive Suppression and Depressive Symptoms
Cross-sectional studies have shown a positive association between expressive suppression and depressive symptoms. These results have been interpreted as reflecting the impact of emotion regulation efforts on depression. However, it is also possible that depression may alter emotion regulation tendencies. The goal of the present study was to prospectively examine the bidirectional association between habitual use of suppression and depressive symp…
Social Coping by Masking? Parental Support and Peer Victimization as Mediators of the Relationship Between Depressive Symptoms and Expressive Suppression in Adolescents
Expressive suppression is regarded as a generally ineffective emotion regulation strategy and appears to be associated with the development of depressive symptoms among adolescents. However, the mechanisms linking suppression to depressive symptoms are not well understood. The main aim of this study was to examine two potential mediators of the prospective relationship from depressive symptoms to expressive suppression among adolescents: parental…
Effects of regulating emotional expression on authenticity and likeability in stranger dyads
The present study compares effects of expressive suppression to a less researched form of expression-focused emotion regulation (namely, amplification) in terms of impact on authenticity and socioemotional outcomes. We expected amplification to result in more positive outcomes than suppression because of its role in facilitating communication. Participants ( N = 306) formed 153 previously unacquainted dyads and were randomly assigned to a suppres…
Putting the emotion regulation process into person-specific context: An experience sampling and mobile sensing study
Perceived demands associated with emotion regulation strategies among young and cognitively diverse older adults
60) reported perceived demands and use of ten ER strategies. As expected, early-acting strategies (e.g. situation selection) were generally viewed as less demanding than later-acting strategies (e.g. masking). Younger adults reported higher cognitive demands and effort requirements compared with CN older adults. For younger adults and CN older adults (but not those with MCI), strategies perceived as less demanding were used more. Older (but not y…
Positive peripheral social partners: Relationship and social interaction evaluations across adulthood
Older adults are theorized to prioritize relationships with close social partners who support their emotional goals. Throughout the lifespan, social partners of varying closeness may play different roles in one's emotional life. We investigate the relationship between age, social closeness, and social partner evaluations at relationship and social interaction levels. Participants aged 25-85 ( N = 309) completed social network questionnaires with …
Links Between Daily Life and Laboratory Emotion Regulation Processes: The Role of Age and Cognitive Status
Cognitively normal older adults may be better able to leverage their ER experience in novel contexts than younger adults. Older adults with MCI may be motivated to manage their emotions but experience more ER difficulty, perhaps in part due to reliance on default strategies
Age and Cognitive Ability Predict Emotion Regulation Strategy Use
Patterns of emotion regulation strategy use varied by age, even when accounting for differences in reactivity. Findings suggest that older adults may not necessarily prefer strategies that are lower in cognitive demands or that focus on enhancing positivity. Results support the idea that strategy preferences are driven by a combination of characteristics of the regulator and the regulation context. The relevance of cognitive resources likely vari…
Age, Resources, and Emotion Regulation Need in Daily-Life Emotional Contexts
Findings suggest that younger age and lower levels of cognitive ability are linked to less perceived need to regulate negative emotional states. Physical vulnerabilities also may dampen the perceived need for regulating high-arousal negative emotions, but only among older adults. Age-related shifts in resources and emotional goals may influence the likelihood that individuals are motivated to engage in ER, as well as the effectiveness of those ef…
Will interventions targeting conscientiousness improve aging outcomes
The articles appearing in this special section discuss the role that conscientiousness may play in healthy aging. Growing evidence suggests that conscientious individuals live longer and healthier lives. However, the question remains whether this personality trait can be leveraged to improve long-term health outcomes. We argue that even though it may be possible to design therapeutic interventions that increase conscientiousness, there may be mor…
Friend or Foe? Age Moderates Time-Course Specific Responsiveness to Trustworthiness Cues
This study provided initial evidence that the age-related positivity effect in affective processing extends to subtle emotional cues, generally interpreted as being reflective of socially relevant personality traits. Implications for aging theories of motivated cognition and developmental changes in reliance on superficial affective cues are discussed
Culture and self-concept stability: Consistency across and within contexts among Asian Americans and European Americans
Whereas prior cultural research has focused on consistency of self-descriptions across contexts, the current 4 studies examined cultural differences in consistency of multiple self-dimensions and did so both across and within different contexts. Supporting predictions, Study 1a found that Asian Americans were less consistent in their self-descriptions across relationship contexts than were European Americans. Yet Study 1b, a short-term longitudin…
Women’s Emotions During Interactions With Their Grown Children in Later Adulthood: The Moderating Role of Attachment Avoidance
Do women’s interactions with their grown children improve their emotional lives later in life? Women in their early 60s participated in a 7-day daily experience study of positive and negative events to examine how interactions with their grown children contribute to specific daily emotions as well as how individual differences in adult attachment moderate these effects. Multilevel modeling analyses revealed that when they interacted with their ch…
Suppression Sours Sacrifice: Emotional and Relational Costs of Suppressing Emotions in Romantic Relationships
What happens when people suppress their emotions when they sacrifice for a romantic partner? This multimethod study investigates how suppressing emotions during sacrifice shapes affective and relationship outcomes. In Part 1, dating couples came into the laboratory to discuss important romantic relationship sacrifices. Suppressing emotions was associated with emotional costs for the partner discussing his or her sacrifice. In Part 2, couples part…
Understanding the social effects of emotion regulation: The mediating role of authenticity for individual differences in suppression
Individuals differ in the strategies they use to regulate their emotions (e.g., suppression, reappraisal), and these regulatory strategies can differentially influence social outcomes. However, the mechanisms underlying these social effects remain to be specified. We examined one potential mediator that arises directly from emotion-regulatory effort (expression of positive emotion), and another mediator that does not involve emotion processes per…
Friend or Foe? Age Moderates Time-Course Specific Responsiveness to Trustworthiness Cues
This study provided initial evidence that the age-related positivity effect in affective processing extends to subtle emotional cues, generally interpreted as being reflective of socially relevant personality traits. Implications for aging theories of motivated cognition and developmental changes in reliance on superficial affective cues are discussed
Emotion Regulation in Adolescence: A Prospective Study of Expressive Suppression and Depressive Symptoms
Cross-sectional studies have shown a positive association between expressive suppression and depressive symptoms. These results have been interpreted as reflecting the impact of emotion regulation efforts on depression. However, it is also possible that depression may alter emotion regulation tendencies. The goal of the present study was to prospectively examine the bidirectional association between habitual use of suppression and depressive symp…
Emotion regulation and peer-rated social functioning: A 4-year longitudinal study
Social Coping by Masking? Parental Support and Peer Victimization as Mediators of the Relationship Between Depressive Symptoms and Expressive Suppression in Adolescents
Expressive suppression is regarded as a generally ineffective emotion regulation strategy and appears to be associated with the development of depressive symptoms among adolescents. However, the mechanisms linking suppression to depressive symptoms are not well understood. The main aim of this study was to examine two potential mediators of the prospective relationship from depressive symptoms to expressive suppression among adolescents: parental…
In Defense of Parenthood: Children Are Associated With More Joy Than Misery
Recent scholarly and media accounts paint a portrait of unhappy parents who find remarkably little joy in taking care of their children, but the scientific basis for these claims remains inconclusive. In the three studies reported here, we used a strategy of converging evidence to test whether parents evaluate their lives more positively than do nonparents (Study 1), feel relatively better than do nonparents on a day-to-day basis (Study 2), and d…
Selective narrowing of social networks across adulthood is associated with improved emotional experience in daily life
Past research has documented age differences in the size and composition of social networks that suggest that networks grow smaller with age and include an increasingly greater proportion of well-known social partners. According to socioemotional selectivity theory, such changes in social network composition serve an antecedent emotion regulatory function that supports an age-related increase in the priority that people place on emotional well-be…
Will interventions targeting conscientiousness improve aging outcomes
The articles appearing in this special section discuss the role that conscientiousness may play in healthy aging. Growing evidence suggests that conscientious individuals live longer and healthier lives. However, the question remains whether this personality trait can be leveraged to improve long-term health outcomes. We argue that even though it may be possible to design therapeutic interventions that increase conscientiousness, there may be mor…
Emotions and Aging
Homesickness and adjustment across the first year of college: A longitudinal study
Homesickness can put individuals at risk for a host of adjustment difficulties. The millions of students that leave home for college each year may be particularly susceptible to experiencing homesickness. There is little work, however, examining individual variation in homesickness over time and how these changes predict different outcomes in college. The present study examines weekly levels of homesickness during the first term of college and te…
Emotional suppression in early marriage: Actor, partner, and similarity effects on marital quality
Although habitual use of suppression has been consistently linked to adverse consequences for overall social functioning, little is known about the implications of using this emotion regulation strategy in the context of romantic relationships. The current longitudinal study tests whether husbands' and wives' habitual use of suppression, as well as couple similarity in the use of this strategy, influence marital quality over the first couple of y…
Emotion regulation strategy selection in daily life: The role of social context and goals
Out of Sight, Out of Mind? Accuracy and Bias in Emotion Regulation Trait Judgments
OBJECTIVE: The current study examined accuracy and bias in judging trait-level emotion regulation strategy use in romantic relationships and tested emotion-related and global predictors of these judgments. METHOD: = 20.39 years; 56.3% Caucasian) completed measures of emotion regulation (self-reported and perceived partner use of suppression and reappraisal), emotionality, emotional expressivity, and relationship quality. RESULTS: Romantic partner…
Individual differences in emotion regulation goals: Does personality predict the reasons why people regulate their emotions
OBJECTIVE: We investigated how the Big Five traits predict individual differences in five theoretically important emotion regulation goals that are commonly pursued-pro-hedonic, contra-hedonic, performance, pro-social, and impression management. METHOD: We conducted two studies: (a) a large survey study consisting of undergraduates (N = 394; 18-25 years; 69% female; 56% European American) and community adults (N = 302; 19-74 years; 50% female; 75…
Regulating for a reason: Emotion regulation goals are linked to spontaneous strategy use
OBJECTIVE: We investigated how individual differences in emotion regulation goals predict emotion regulation strategy use in daily life. METHOD: Across three studies, we assessed two common types of emotion regulation goals (hedonic, social) and strategies spanning the entire process model of emotion regulation. We conducted two studies using global measures with undergraduates (N = 394; 18-25 years; 69% female; 56% European American) and communi…
Age differences in emotion regulation strategy use, variability, and flexibility: An experience sampling approach
Life span developmental theories suggest that as individuals age, they accumulate knowledge about how to deploy emotion regulation (ER) strategies effectively and learn how to match their ER strategy use with changes in situational demands. Using an event-contingent experience sampling design wherein 150 adults Age 18 to 89 years reported on 64,213 social interactions (M = 427.41, SD = 145.66) during 9 weeks of daily life, this study examines (a)…
Mood regulation and relationship quality predict change in homesickness during college
Recent theorizing has implicated affect regulation as central to the experience of homesickness. Conceptualized as grief due to losing social connections with close others when relocating, homesickness is associated with poor emotional and social adjustment. The present study examined how mood regulation and relationship quality – at home and in college – predict homesickness and negative affect among college students ( N = 168). We assessed 16 m…
Variability in state authenticity predicts daily affect and emotion regulation
Authenticity can be defined as congruence between one's outer behavior and one's feelings or sense of self. People can experience moments of lower congruence in their day-to-day lives. Authenticity variability refers to fluctuations over time in momentary congruence. We propose that authenticity variability is linked to lower emotional well-being (i.e., more negative affect and less positive affect) and greater need for emotion regulation. Colleg…
Always in flux: The role of attentional focus in emotion regulation dynamics
Flexible emotion regulation (ER) in response to contextual changes is important for well-being. However, little is known about predictors of ER dynamics or their consequences. We investigated these questions in 113 romantic couples by priming self-, partner-, or relationship-focus in one partner prior to a 10-min conflict discussion. Afterwards, participants reported their ER using a video-recall task, and independent coders rated participants' a…
Adult attachment and interpersonal emotion regulation motives in daily life
Interpersonal goals and adult attachment have implications for how people interact with others as well as for emotion experience and regulation. Literature on intrapersonal emotional processes has typically not examined motivations underlying people's engagement with others' emotions and its connections to individual differences related to close relationships such as attachment. This study analyzed the relationships between interpersonal emotion …
Fluid and crystallized cognitive resources differentially linked to emotion regulation success in adulthood
Effective emotion regulation (ER) is theorized to require cognitive resources. Past work has identified inconsistent relationships between cognitive ability and ER success and has focused on implementation of instructed ER strategies. In the present study, we examine a wide range of cognitive abilities as predictors of ER success in the absence of constraints on strategy selection. An age-diverse sample of participants ( N = 129, age 25-83) compl…
Cognitive Effort-Based Decision-Making Across Experimental and Daily Life Indices in Younger and Older Adults
Together, these results suggest that cognitive effort costs, as measured through behavioral choice patterns in a neuroeconomic decision-making task, can be used to predict and explain engagement in mentally demanding activities during daily life among both older and younger adults
Psychology (41 works) · Developmental psychology (38 works) · Social Psychology (26 works) · Social Psychology (18 works) · Aging and Gerontology Research (17 works) · Attachment and Relationship Dynamics (14 works) · Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development (14 works) · Cognition (14 works) · Cognitive psychology (14 works) · Mental Health Research Topics (14 works)