Featured Works

Featured Work

The Impact of Context

 

Chen, M. S., Cai, Q., Omari, D., Sanghvi, D. E., Lyu, S., & Bonanno, G. A. (2025). Emotion regulation and mental health across cultures: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Nature Human Behaviour, 9(6), 1228–1246. [PDF]

  • This meta-analysis of 249 studies across 37 countries shows that cultural differences in emotion regulation are not limited to expressive suppression and that the cultural dimensions moderating them extend beyond individualism.

 

Chen, M. S., & Soto, J. A. (2024). Expanding the scope of diverse contexts in affective science. Affective Science, 5(3), 201–208. [PDF]

  • This commentary advocates for using a dimensional approach to culture and understanding how culture interact with situational and developmental contexts in affective science. 

 

Liu, A. Y., Bi, K., Lee, B., & Chen, M. S. (2026). Is the more the merrier? Affective outcomes of emotion polyregulation depend on the idiographic effective strategy ratio across cultures. Affective Science, 7, 381-395. [PDF]

  • This paper introduced the idiographic effective strategy ratio and showed that, while which discrete strategies are effective differs across cultures, the benefit of using idiographically effective strategies demonstrates cultural similarity.

 

Flexibility 

 

Chen, M. S., & Joormann, J. (2026). Emotion regulation flexibility in resilience and psychopathology: Status, challenges, and future directions. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 33(3), 275–286. [PDF]

  • This review critically evaluates a decade of research on emotion regulation flexibility and suggests future directions.

 

Chen, M. S., Bi, K., Han, X., Sun, P., & Bonanno, G. A. (2024). Emotion regulation flexibility and momentary affect in two cultures. Nature Mental Health, 2, 450–459. [PDF]

  • This paper developed momentary measures of flexibility in 21-day EMA studies in the United States and China and found culturally consistent, independent benefits of flexibility across the evaluation, implementation, and monitoring stages of emotion regulation.

 

Chen, M. S., Bi, K., Deng, W., Zhu, Y., & Joormann, J. (2026). Variability is not flexibility: Emotion regulation switching predicts increased momentary distress when context is stable. Journal of Psychopathology and Clinical Science, 135(7), 994–1006. [PDF]

  • This EMA study shows that switching strategies predicts more distress when the situation has not changed, underscoring the need to differentiate flexibility from variability.

 

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