The Relation between Regulatory Emotional Self-Efficacy and Negative Affect in Daily Life: A Study Among Spanish and Italian University Students

Cross-sectional and long-term longitudinal studies showed the protective role of Self-efficacy in Regulating Negative Emotions (SRN) on negative affect (NA). Yet, the extent to which SRN could serve against NA within a short-term framework (i.e., experience sampling method) remains a research question partly unaddressed. Hence, we aimed to assess the relation between SRN and NA both with daily (sample 1) and weekly (sample 2) data from Italian (n = 108, 88.9% women, mage = 22.19, SD = 2.66) and Spanish (n = 152, 80.3% women, mage = 22.53, SD = 3.74) young adults. The random intercept cross-lagged panel model showed a negative association between SRN and NA in terms of between (r1 = -.266, p<.001; r2 = -.589, p<.001) and within-person level correlations (rs1 ranged from -.24 to -.35, ps <.001; rs2 from -.28 to -.44, ps <.05) in both samples. We did not find significant spill-over-lagged effects in any sample. Overall, the results indicate the simultaneous negative associations between SRN and NA at both levels. Future studies with shorter frameworks (i.e., hours) are needed to elucidate more moment-to-moment relations between SRN and NA. The practical implications for promoting students' emotional well-being are discussed.