Successful Mood Repair in the Laboratory Predicts Successful Mood Repair in Daily Life for Typical but Not for Depression-Prone Young Adults

Successful mood repair (i.e., attenuating sad, dysphoric affect) is a critical form of emotion regulation that is necessary for healthy functioning. Laboratory-based studies have examined how well individuals can reduce sadness and how this process is affected by psychopathology like depression and cognitive mechanisms like attentional control. However, the extent to which laboratory-based findings inform about the regulation of sadness in daily life is unknown. To examine the ecological validity of laboratory-based mood repair paradigms, we compared mood repair success in the laboratory and daily life (assessed via ecological momentary assessment) among young adults remitted from depression (n = 126) and those never depressed (n = 104). Participants completed an experimental mood repair task followed by a 7-day ecological momentary assessment protocol during which they reported the responses they used to regulate sadness throughout the day. We expected that history of diagnosed depression and attentional control (assessed via a self-report questionnaire) would moderate the relationship between mood repair success in the two settings. Overall, more successful mood repair in the laboratory predicted more successful mood repair in daily life, supporting the ecological validity of laboratory-based information about affective processes. Depression history (but not attentional control) moderated this relationship:Mood repair in the laboratory predicted mood repair in daily life among never-depressed participants, while the association was only at a trend level among those with remitted depression. Thus, the findings raise questions about how the laboratory-based mood repair performance of depression-prone individuals can inform depression-focused conceptual and treatment development.