Torn Between Valences: Mixed Emotions Predict Poorer Psychological Well-Being and Job Burnout

Linking teacher support to achievement emotion profile: the mediating role of basic psychological need satisfaction

The current study used a person-centered approach to explore the co-occurrence of college students' achievement emotions. It also examined the impact of teacher support on achievement emotion profiles and the mediating effect of need satisfaction. A total of 866 college students participated in the survey. A robust three-step latent profile analysis was employed to analyze the data. Four profiles of achievement emotions were identified: moderate mixed emotions, the blends of high positive emotions, the blends of moderate positive emotions, and high mixed emotions. Higher perceived teacher support was associated with a greater likelihood of being classified into the blends of moderate positive emotion profile or the blends of high positive emotion profile. Moreover, basic psychological need satisfaction mediated the relationship between teacher support and the four emotion profiles. Our findings contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of the role of teacher support in shaping achievement emotion profiles, helping to broaden the application of self-determination theory to explain the mechanism by which external support influences emotion profiles.

How time orientation matters for happiness: The nonmonotonic relations featured with a middle valley

Most previous studies have shown that focusing on the future predicts higher subjective well-being (SWB), but some have reported contradictory results. Due to mixed findings on the relationship between time orientation (TO) and SWB, the present study attempted to clarify and reinterpret this relationship from a nonmonotonic perspective by analyzing two large-scale datasets from the European Social Survey (Study 1; 31 countries, total N = 88,873) and tested the cross-cultural generalizability of our findings in a Chinese sample (Study 2; N = 797). The results confirmed a nonmonotonic relationship between TO and SWB and first revealed a "Middle Valley Effect." This effect demonstrated a decreased SWB at the midpoint of the TO scale, indicating that maintaining a dominant TO, whether present or future, rather than being torn between the two, could improve SWB. This nonmonotonic relationship resolves previous inconsistent findings and suggests that an appropriate clear TO can benefit SWB.

Direct versus indirect measures of mixed emotions in predictive models: a comparison of predictive validity, multicollinearity, and the influence of confounding variables

Mixed emotions have been assessed using both direct measures that utilize self-report questionnaires as well as indirect measures that are computed from scores of positive and negative emotions. This study provides a pre-registered methodological examination on the use of direct and indirect measures of mixed emotions in predictive models. Two samples (N = 749) were collected, and path analyses were performed to compare direct measures and indirect measures in predicting psychological conflict, receptivity, and well-being, controlling for demographics, positive emotions, and negative emotions. We also tested whether trait dialecticism, need for cognition, social desirability, or acquiescence could account for these associations. In both samples, results suggest that indirect measures may be more susceptible to multicollinearity when controlling for positive and negative emotions. Specifically, variance inflation factors (VIF) were consistently higher for indirect measures calculated using the minimum index (MIN; VIFSample-1 = 3.53; VIFSample-2 = 9.46) than direct measures (VIFSample-1 = 2.52; VIFSample-2 = 1.68). Direct measures remained consistently associated with increased conflict and reduced coherence upon controlling for positive and negative emotions, while indirect measures remained consistently associated only with increased conflict. We found little evidence that response biases explained associations between direct measures or indirect measures with each of the outcomes. Specifically, associations between mixed emotions with psychological conflict, receptivity, and well-being largely remained unchanged in models that controlled for trait dialecticism, need for cognition, social desirability, or acquiescence. Implications and recommendations based on our findings are discussed.

Mapping the mental space of emotional concepts through kinematic measures of decision uncertainty

Emotional concepts and their mental representations have been extensively studied. Yet, some ecologically relevant aspects, such as how they are processed in ambiguous contexts (e.g., in relation to other emotional stimuli that share similar characteristics), are incompletely known. We employed a similarity judgement of emotional concepts and manipulated the contextual congruency of the responses along the two main affective dimensions of hedonic valence and physiological activation, respectively. Behavioural and kinematics (mouse-tracking) measures were combined to gather a novel 'similarity index' between emotional concepts, to derive topographical maps of their mental representations. Self-report (interoceptive sensibility, positive-negative affectivity, depression) and physiological measures (heart rate variability, HRV) have been collected to explore their possible association with emotional conceptual representation. Results indicate that emotional concepts typically associated with low arousal profit by contextual congruency, with faster responses and reduced uncertainty when contextual ambiguity decreases. The emotional maps recreate two almost orthogonal axes of valence and arousal, and the similarity measure captures the smooth boundaries between emotions. The emotional map of a subgroup of individuals with low positive affectivity reveals a narrower conceptual distribution, with variations in positive emotions and in individuals with reduced arousal (such as those with reduced HRV). Our work introduces a novel methodology to study emotional conceptual representations, bringing the behavioural dynamics of decision-making processes and choice uncertainty into the affective domain. This article is part of the theme issue 'Concepts in interaction: social engagement and inner experiences'.

Low Income Amplifies the Negative Relationship Between Nostalgia Proneness and Well-Being

Nostalgia is a sentimental longing for the past that can influence people's well-being. How this mixed emotion influences well-being may depend on current life circumstances. Nostalgia elicited in negative contexts could be particularly harmful to people's well-being, whereas nostalgia elicited in positive contexts may not be as detrimental. This hypothesis was tested at the level of individual differences with a nationally representative sample of Americans (N = 6,732) who completed measures of nostalgia proneness and several indicators of well-being. Income was measured as an objective indicator of current life circumstances. Results showed that nostalgia proneness was negatively related to well-being, and income was positively related to well-being. Importantly, these relationships were moderated such that the negative relationships between nostalgia and well-being were stronger among members of low income households than among members of high income households. Consistent with the hypothesis, nostalgia proneness was particularly detrimental to well-being under objectively less desirable circumstances. These findings support an emerging body of research that contends that the effect of nostalgia on well-being depends on the context in which nostalgia is elicited.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11482-022-10066-8.

Specificity in the Study of Mixed Emotions: A Theoretical Framework

Research on mixed emotions is yet to consider emotion-specificity, the idea that same-valenced emotions have distinctive characteristics and functions. We review two decades of research on mixed emotions, focusing on evidence for the occurrence of mixed emotions and the effects of mixed emotions on downstream outcomes. We then propose a novel theoretical framework of mixed-emotion-specificity with three foundational tenets: (a) Mixed emotions are distinguishable from single-valenced emotions and other mixed emotions based on their emotion-appraisal relationships; (b) Mixed emotions can further be characterized by four patterns that describe relationships between simultaneous appraisals or appraisals that are unique to mixed emotions; and (c) Carryover effects occur only on outcomes that are associated with the appraisal characteristics of mixed emotion. We outline how mixed-emotion-specific effects can be predicted based on the appraisal tendency framework. Temporal dynamics, the application of mixed-emotion-specificity to individual difference research, methodological issues, and future directions are also discussed.