Family stressful life event, anger and sadness and adjustment: An ecological momentary assessment with Italian adolescents.

Emotion regulation is an especially relevant aspect of character development (Caspi et al., 2005), that has been linked to psychological adjustment in adolescence (Valiente & Eisenberg, 2006). Previous studies have linked anger dysregulation not only to aggressive behaviors, but also to depressive symptoms; likewise, sadness dysregulation has been linked to both depressive symptoms and to aggressive behaviors (e.g., Chaplin, 2006; Feng et al., 2009; Morris et al. 2010). Recent studies have highlighted the importance of studying the day-to-day variability of youths’ emotional experiences (e.g., Garrison et al., 2014; Maciejewski et al., 2017; Silk et al., 2011). Advantages of the ecological momentary assessment (EMA) approach over traditional methods in measuring emotional experience include higher ecological validity and more reliable measures than laboratory and questionnaire measures, minimization of retrospective reporting biases; and information about the social contexts associated with emotional experiences. In an attempt to understand day-to-day variability in adolescents’ emotional experiences and emotion dysregulation, research has begun to examine the role of adverse life events experienced by youths (e.g., Abravanel & Sinha, 2015; Turner & Lloy, 2004) as well as family climate and the nature of family relationships (Morris et al., 2007). The present study examined the impact that stressful life events experienced within the family have on adolescents’ daily emotional experiences, which in turn affect their aggressive and depressive symptomatology. At Time 1, participants included 103 mothers and 79 fathers of adolescents (M age = 15.56, SD = .77; 53% male). Parents reported whether their family experienced stressful life events (e.g., major repairs/remodeling to home, severe and/or frequent illness for any child in the home; Deater-Deckard et al., 1998). At Time 2, for 15 consecutive days (morning, afternoon, and evening), youths (M age = 16.77, SD = .78) were prompted to answer through their mobile phones questions about whether they were feeling angry, mad, and irritated, as well as sad, dejected, and discouraged in that moment (1 = “very slightly or not at all”; 5 = “extremely”). Youths were also asked once per day three items tapping aggressive and depressive symptoms (adapted from Youth Self-Reports; Achenbach, 1991), occurring on that day. Path analysis revealed that parent-reports of family stressful life events were associated with more frequent self-reported adolescent anger and sadness experience. In addition, both anger and sadness were associated with depressive symptoms, whereas only sadness was associated with aggressive behaviors.