In recent years, there has been an increased interest among researchers in the systematic research of the psychology of situations. This study aims to examine how emotion experience and regulation differ according to objective categories of situations (with whom, where and what the individual is doing) and how the emotion experience and its regulation are related to the subjective characteristics of the situation as defined by the taxonomy of the Situational Eight – DIAMONDS (Rauthmann et al., 2014). The sample included 63 psychology students (92% women; M = 20 years, SD = 0.89 years), who filled out a short questionnaire about their emotion experience, regulation and the characteristics of situations via a mobile application four times a day in a period of four days. Results showed that the participants felt a higher level of emotional valence and activation in situations in which they are together with people with whom they are in close relationships, when they are in nature, on a visit, and when they are physically active, socialising, eat and participate in leisure activities. In most situations, participants felt happiness, less often sadness, anger, fear, surprise and disgust. To regulate emotional experience, participants used the strategy of expressing emotions in situations when they were with their partner and friends, on a visit, when they socialised and were physically active, and suppression in situations related to studies, work and obligations. The strategies of redirecting attention and cognitive reappraisal were used less frequently. The results related to subjectively perceived dimensions of situations showed that the valence of emotions is positively correlated with the dimension of positivity and negatively with the dimension of negativity. Also, the dimension of positivity and sociality is positively correlated with the level of activation of emotions. In situations that the participants perceived as pleasant and social, they more often regulated their emotions by sharing them with others, and in situations which are perceived as unpleasant and negative, they used the strategy of redirecting attention. The findings of the research, with which we applied the field of psychology of situations to the field of emotions, clearly demonstrate the importance of the subjective assessment of situations in the field of emotions. This also corresponds to the role played by the cognitive evaluation of situations in the context of the emotion emergence model.
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