Maladaptive Daydreaming, Emotion Regulation, and Perceived Stress: A Critical Integrative Review
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.67336/4y5tb113Keywords:
maladaptive daydreaming, emotion regulation, perceived stress, dissociation, university students, intensive longitudinal researchAbstract
Maladaptive daydreaming (MD) is immersive, hard-to-control fantasy activity that causes distress or interferes with functioning. Studies link MD with emotion-regulation difficulties, but the temporal relationship among emotion regulation, perceived stress, and MD is unclear. This critical integrative review organizes the evidence around four explanatory models: emotion-regulation vulnerability, coping/function, reciprocal process, and shared vulnerability. It is anchored to the 2025 scoping review by Mansuklal et al., which mapped 89 studies through March 2024, and adds studies published to September 2026 found through targeted searches and reference chaining. The association between MD and emotion-regulation difficulties is consistent but rests on a small quantitative base: a 2025 meta-analysis pooled four studies (r = .365, 95% CI [.308, .419]) and imputed two missing studies below the mean. Direct evidence on perceived stress is smaller and mostly cross-sectional. Corrected results from Mancinelli et al. (2024) cut the probable-MD sample from 252 to 190 and removed the association with depression. Daily-diary and longitudinal studies show that MD can precede later distress and that daily MD covaries with symptoms, but negative emotion did not precede MD at a one-day lag, and no study establishes a general stress-to-MD mechanism. The review specifies which observations would separate the four models and recommends intensive longitudinal designs that separate trait from state variance, measure perceived stress directly, estimate reciprocal lagged paths, and record emotional change around MD episodes.
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