Date of Award

Spring 5-10-2022

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts in Psychology

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Yaroslavsky, Ilya

Second Advisor

Poreh, Amir

Third Advisor

Reardon, Kathleen

Subject Headings

Psychology

Abstract

Negative affect (NA) is a known precipitant of cravings, and each are robust predictors of lapses, making this pathway an excellent target for lapse prevention in opioid treatment. As emotion dysregulation arises from unmitigated NA, deficits in emotion regulation (ER) contribute to cravings in part by worsening distress, although the form these deficits take remains unclear. Coping motives are relevant in the context of NA and show robust associations with ER difficulties. Further, coping motives have demonstrated a similar role in exacerbating the effect NA has on cravings. This study aimed to explore the conditional indirect effects of ER deficits (in the form high reliance on maladaptive strategies and insufficient use of adaptive strategies) on NA and craving via the conditional effects of coping motives in opioid use in a piecemeal approach. Treatment seeking opioid users less than 90 days clean (N=57) completed dispositional measures of using motives and ER repertoires followed by a 7-day ecological momentary assessment protocol indexing ratings of NA and craving across each day. General and mixed-effects linear models were fit to test hypothesized effects. Results indicate coping, enhancement, and pain, but not social motives predict maladaptive ER and no using motives predict adaptive ER. Coping motives and within-person fluctuations in NA interactively predict craving, with simple effects suggesting high dispositional coping motives exacerbate the effect of NA on craving and individual differences explain the variability in this effect. Conditional indirect effect of ER deficits via coping motives could not be tested due to insufficient statistical power, but the total effect of maladaptive repertoires and within-person fluctuations in NA interactively predict craving at a trend level. Simple effects suggest high maladaptive repertoires exacerbate the effect of NA on craving and individual differences explain the variability in this effect. Adaptive ER interactions were not interpretable. These finding suggest understanding using motives and reliance on maladaptive ER may help identify increased lapse risk in clinical settings.

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