Dealing with feelings in adolescence: Cognitive reappraisals in unpleasant and pleasant emotional events and their associations with subjective well‐being

Adolescence is a period of heightened exposure to both unpleasant and pleasant events, requiring effective emotion regulation. Cognitive reappraisal is particularly beneficial, yet research has typically examined its role either in unpleasant or in pleasant situations, rarely considering both simultaneously within individuals. In this 28-day daily diary study, we investigated whether cognitive reappraisal in unpleasant and pleasant events each uniquely contributes to subjective well-being, and, given cognitive maturation during adolescence, whether these associations become stronger with increasing age. A sample of 122 adolescents (15-19 years; M = 17.01, SD = 1.42) reported their end-of-day subjective well-being and the use of eight cognitive reappraisal strategies for the day's most unpleasant and most pleasant events. On a within-person level, both types of reappraisal predicted higher subjective well-being, even when simultaneously included in the model. Unexpectedly, these effects did not vary by age. On a between-person level, reappraisal in unpleasant and pleasant events was each associated with higher subjective well-being, but not when analyzed jointly, due to shared variance between both types of reappraisal. The within-person findings highlight that regulating emotions in both unpleasant and pleasant events uniquely contributes to adolescent well-being, emphasizing the importance of context on emotion regulation in adolescents.