Exposure to stressful life events is strongly associated with internalizing psychopathology, and identifying factors that reduce vulnerability to stress-related internalizing problems is critical for development of early interventions. Drawing on research from affective science, we tested whether high emotion differentiation—the ability to specifically identify one’s feelings—buffers adolescents from developing internalizing symptoms when exposed to stress. Thirty adolescents completed a laboratory measure of emotion differentiation before an intensive yearlong longitudinal study in which exposure to stress and internalizing problems were assessed at both the moment level (n = 4,921 experience-sampling assessments) and month level (n = 355 monthly assessments). High negative and positive emotion differentiation attenuated moment-level coupling between perceived stress and feelings of depression, and high negative emotion differentiation eliminated month-level associations between stressful life events and anxiety symptoms. These results suggest that high emotion differentiation buffers adolescents against anxiety and depression in the face of stress, perhaps by facilitating adaptive emotion regulation.

暴露于压力生活事件与内化精神病理学密切相关，确定减少与压力相关的内化问题的脆弱性的因素对于制定早期干预措施至关重要。根据情感科学的研究，我们测试了高度情绪分化（明确识别自己感受的能力）是否可以缓冲青少年在面临压力时出现内化症状。三十名青少年在为期一年的密集纵向研究之前完成了情绪分化的实验室测量，其中在瞬间水平（ n = 4,921 经验抽样评估）和月份水平（ n = 355 每月评估）评估压力暴露和内化问题。高消极和积极情绪分化减弱了感知压力和抑郁感之间的时刻级耦合，而高消极情绪分化消除了压力生活事件和焦虑症状之间的月份级关联。这些结果表明，高情绪分化可能通过促进适应性情绪调节来缓冲青少年在面对压力时免受焦虑和抑郁的影响。