Abstract
Theories suggest that capturing people’s motives (the ‘why’) for regulating allows for a better understanding of how people choose to regulate their emotions. Yet, little empirical research systematically examines the link between motives and regulation strategies. Addressing this gap, we conducted an experience-sampling study to: 1) capture the prevalence of a wide range of regulatory motives (hedonic, instrumental) in everyday life and (2) test whether motives were associated with the selection of six regulation strategies, controlling for affect intensity. Data were collected in Australia in 2024, from an adult community sample (NID=303; Nobs=3496; Mage = 26.11; 80% women, mostly identifying as East Asian and South-East Asian). Hedonic motives were most frequent, but instrumental motives were also common. Regulatory motives showed distinct strategy selection profiles: prohedonic motives were linked with greater distraction and cognitive reappraisal, whereas contrahedonic motives were rare, and only predicted greater rumination. Different instrumental motives were differentially associated with the use of specific strategies. Only cognitive strategies (reappraisal and rumination) were linked to multiple motives, being significantly associated with prohedonic, contrahedonic (rumination), personal performance, social, epistemic, and eudaimonic motives. By investigating the momentary association between a broad range of motives and regulation strategies, this work suggests that emotion regulation strategies are associated not only with what people feel, but also with why they regulate. Future empirical work should explicitly consider individuals’ regulatory motives, rather than assuming regulatory effectiveness based on hedonic motives.