Abstract
Two studies (ns = 422, 263) examined individual differences in repair styles, in which strategies habitually used to repair negative affect depend on shared underlying features. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses revealed two repair styles organized around the use of adaptive, engagement strategies (adaptive engagement style) or maladaptive, avoidance strategies (maladaptive avoidance style). This two-factor structure fit the data better than several theoretically derived models; both repair styles were highly stable across 3 months and associated with personality, emotional intelligence, state and trait repair efforts, and adaptation. Findings add to the extant affect regulation literature and suggest directions for future research.
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Notes
In the current studies we focused on explicit negative affect repair and not on the related constructs of emotion and mood regulation, coping, or implicit affect regulation. We did this for three reasons. First, all of the four known studies that have examined repair style focused on explicit regulation, and we sought to expand on this work. Second, no study of repair style has focused on the taxonomy of Parkinson and Totterdell (1999), which only includes explicit strategies used to repair negative affect (i.e., all aversive states). Third, coping is conceptually subordinate to the broader construct of affect regulation, and as the distinctions among these constructs have been thoroughly explicated (see Gross 2015) this is beyond the scope of the current paper.
It seems unlikely that people select strategies that they know will be ineffective in the short-term and impair their health in the long-term. However, it is also clear that some people do tend to rely on strategies that have these outcomes. While we offer some suggestions in the current research regarding likely sources of repair styles (e.g., emotional intelligence and intensity) the mechanisms leading to repair styles is beyond the scope of the current studies.
Kishton and Widaman (1994) recommend that unidimensional scales (e.g., those representing each strategy) are parceled in an effort to achieve item-to-construct balance. Specifically, they recommend conducting single factor EFAs for each scale and then combining the highest and lowest loading items into an average score, then the next highest and lowest items, etc. until all unique items are assigned to parcels. Supplemental Table 1 displays the number of items used in each parcel; specific item-to-parcel mappings can be obtained from the authors.
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Hemenover, S.H., Harbke, C.R. Individual differences in negative affect repair style. Motiv Emot 43, 517–533 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-019-09752-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-019-09752-2