2 - (SYM 36) Daily Stress and Risk for Emotional Disorders in Ethnic Minority College Students: Uncovering the Dynamic Role of Emotion Regulation Flexibility

Abstract Body

Higher education serves as a gateway to upward mobility, yet ethnic minority college students (CS), particularly first-generation students, face systemic and psychological stressors, including financial strain, acculturative stress, and racial discrimination. These stressors elevate the risk for emotional disorders such as depression and anxiety. While emotion regulation (ER) is critical for managing stress, research has largely overlooked ER flexibility (i.e., the ability to use regulatory strategies based on changing contextual demands) in this population. Prior ER flexibility studies typically examine a single framework (e.g., Bonanno & Burton, 2013; Aldao et al., 2015), limiting a comprehensive understanding of how ER flexibility processes interact over time. This study addresses these gaps by integrating two leading ER flexibility frameworks, capturing how ER processes fluctuate in real-time in response to stress in a historically underserved population.
 
This study enrolled 120 ethnic minority CS who completed ecological momentary assessment surveys three times daily for 14 days, assessing momentary stressors, stress levels, depression and anxiety symptoms, ER strategy use, situational demands, and ER effectiveness. Preliminary multilevel models suggest higher context sensitivity is protective, predicting lower depression (p < .001), anxiety (p < .001), and perceived stress (p < .001). However, greater ER repertoire was unexpectedly linked to higher distress (p’s < .001), suggesting that frequent strategy-switching may not always be adaptive. Effortful regulation was associated with reduced distress (p < .001), while feedback responsiveness (i.e., strategy modification based on prior effectiveness) was not a significant predictor (p’s > .19). Ongoing analyses will refine feedback responsiveness using lag-based modeling and explore ER variability as a key dynamic process.
Findings advance theoretical understanding of ER flexibility as a multidimensional, dynamic system rather than a fixed trait. Clinically, identifying flexibility profiles linked to resilience versus risk could inform real-time, culturally responsive interventions for ethnic minority CS, particularly first-generation students at heightened mental health risk. This research underscores the importance of studying ER flexibility in diverse, historically underrepresented populations, with implications for mental health equity and tailored intervention development. Limitations and future directions will be discussed.