When context matters: Negative emotions predict psychological health and adjustment

Physiological and communicative emotional disconcordance in children on the autism spectrum

BACKGROUND

Individuals on the autism spectrum commonly have differences from non-autistic people in expressing their emotions using communicative behaviors, such as facial expressions. However, it is not yet clear if this reduced expressivity stems from reduced physiological reactivity in emotional contexts or if individuals react internally, but do not show these reactions externally to others. We hypothesized that autism is characterized by a discordance between in-the-moment internal psychophysiological arousal and external communicative expressions of emotion.

METHODS

Forty-one children on the autism spectrum and 39 non-autistic, typically developing (TD) children of two age groups (2-4 and 8-12 years) participated in a low-level stress task whilst wearing a wireless electrocardiogram. Children's negative emotional expressions (facial, vocal, bodily) were coded following standardized protocols. Alexithymia traits were assessed using the Children's Alexithymia Measure with school-aged children only. Data analyses involved ANOVAs, correlations, and sensitivity analyses.

RESULTS

There were no group differences in physiological arousal (heart rate) or in communicative expressions of stress to the stress task. For TD preschoolers, physiological arousal during the stress task was associated with vocal expressions and for TD school-aged children, they were associated with facial and bodily expressions. By contrast, for children on the autism spectrum, physiological arousal during the stress tasks was not associated with communicative expressions across age groups.

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings suggest that children on the autism spectrum might experience emotional disconcordance, in that their physiological arousal does not align with their communicative expressions. Therefore, the internally experienced stress of children on the autism spectrum may be inadvertently missed by teachers and caregivers and, consequently, learning opportunities for teaching emotional communication and regulation may be also missed. Our results support the use of wearable biosensors to facilitate such interventions in children on the autism spectrum.

Urgency Theory in the context of broader emotion theories: a conceptual review

Negative and positive urgency are two closely related personality traits that reflect the tendency for an individual to engage in maladaptive risk-taking in response to extreme negative and positive emotions, respectively. However, other prominent emotion theories describe how emotions contribute to adaptive, rather than maladaptive, decision-making. This conceptual review considers how Urgency Theory can be integrated with these broader existing emotion theories. We proceed as follows: a) briefly define what is meant by emotions in science and summarize basic human neuroscience underlying emotions; b) briefly describe select theories and research linking emotions to adaptive decision-making, including brain correlates of this effect; c) review Urgency Theory, including contrasting evidence that emotions lead to maladaptive outcomes and brain correlates of this effect; d) discuss how urgency can be integrated into theories that view emotions as both adaptive and maladaptive for decision-making; and e) propose future directions to advance research in this field. We identified four, not mutually exclusive, viable options to integrate Urgency Theory into existing theories: urgency as model-free emotion regulation, urgency as being driven by incidental emotions, urgency as a reflexive response to emotions, or urgency as an individual difference factor. We conclude that although all four options are viable, individual difference and model-free emotion regulation have the most empirical support to date. Importantly, the other two options are less well-researched. Direct tests comparing these integrations is necessary to determine the most accurate way to integrate urgency with existing emotion theories. We believe that this research can identify mechanisms underlying urgency and help inform future intervention and prevention development to reduce negative effects of urgency across numerous maladaptive behaviors and clinical disorders.

What drives preventative health behaviors one year into a pandemic? A replication and extension

Objective: There is continued interest in understanding what leads people to engage in CDC-recommended COVID-19 prevention behaviors. We tested whether fear and COVID-19 worry would replicate as the primary drivers of six CDC recommended prevention behaviors. Methods and Measures: We recruited 741 adult participants during the second major peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States (early 2021). Using very similar methods to the original study, participants completed a 10-day daily diary. Mixed effects models identified the strongest predictors of each individual prevention behavior as well as approach and avoidance behavior clusters. Results: At the between-person level, COVID-19 worry, COVID-19 perceived susceptibility, fear, and positive emotions all had positive zero-order associations with the prevention behaviors. However, with all predictors in the same model together, primarily COVID-19 worry remained significant for both the individual behaviors and behavior clusters. At the within-person level, only fear related to assessing oneself for COVID-19 and approach behaviors on the same day, but not the next day. Mediational analyses suggested COVID-19 worry, but not COVID-19 susceptibility, mediated the links between fear and approach/avoidance behaviors. Conclusion: Findings replicated worry about yourself or a loved one getting COVID-19 as the strongest predictor of prevention behaviors.

Effects of a brief online emotion word learning task on negative emotion differentiation, emotional self-efficacy, and prospective distress: Preliminary findings

BACKGROUND

Disruptions in emotion processing are common across psychological disorders. Research suggests that emotion differentiation (ED; specificity in language used to characterize one's emotional experience) and emotional self-efficacy (ESE; perceived ability to understand and manage one's emotions) are important transdiagnostic factors associated with various psychological benefits. Whether ED and ESE can be improved in adults remains largely unclear.

METHODS

Using a longitudinal prospective design, we tested a brief online training targeting emotion word knowledge (vs. a control condition) to see if it improved negative ED (NED) and ESE in a college sample. Moreover, we tested if changes in NED or ESE mediated the effects of the training on levels of psychological distress one week and two-months post-intervention.

RESULTS

Findings provided partial support for our hypotheses. Individuals whose ESE increased post-intervention reported lower levels of distress two months later. Moreover, exploratory analyses revealed those who demonstrated greater training engagement experienced increases in NED that in turn predicted lower distress one-week post-intervention. However, there were no direct effects of intervention group on NED or ESE and distress.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings highlight the potential of a remotely-administered emotion-language intervention to influence key dimensions of emotion processing and suggest avenues for further refinement. Both NED and ESE may be malleable for some, and that enhancements in ESE may produce long-term psychological benefits.

Recalled protective childhood experiences are associated with positive emotional expression in active-duty firefighters

There is a wealth of research linking adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) with negative outcomes later in life, but less research has focused on the effects of protective childhood experiences (PCEs). PCEs have been shown broadly to promote resilience, but the precise nature of this association is not clear, particularly in studies of at-risk adults. The current investigation explored the association between recollection of early life experiences and in vivo emotional responses in at-risk adults. In 2018, 56 active-duty firefighters reported childhood experiences via a questionnaire. Using a semistructured interview, firefighters then responded to questions about recent emotionally evocative experiences (positive and negative) as a firefighter. Emotion was measured in vivo via sympathetic arousal and recorded facial expressions of emotion. Individuals who reported more PCEs expressed significantly more facial expressions of positive emotion across contexts, sr2 = .11-.14. Early childhood experiences were not significantly associated with negative facial expressions or changes in sympathetic reactivity, but ACEs were associated with tonic levels of arousal in a negative context, r = -.36. Given the adaptive role of positive emotions in adjustment to adverse events, the current investigation suggests a potential protective association between PCEs and the expression of emotion even within a high-risk context, which could help explain the resilience promoting role of PCEs.

Risk and protective factors for stress generation: A meta-analytic review

The stress generation hypothesis suggests that some individuals contribute more than others to the occurrence of dependent (self-generated), but not independent (fateful), stressful life events. This phenomenon is commonly studied in relation to psychiatric disorders, but effects are also driven by underlying psychological processes that extend beyond the boundaries of DSM-defined entities. This meta-analytic review of modifiable risk and protective factors for stress generation synthesizes findings from 70 studies with 39,693 participants (483 total effect sizes) from over 30 years of research. Findings revealed a range of risk factors that prospectively predict dependent stress with small-to-moderate meta-analytic effects (rs = 0.10-0.26). Negligible to small effects were found for independent stress (rs = 0.03-0.12), and, in a critical test for stress generation, most effects were significantly stronger for dependent compared to independent stress (βs = 0.04-0.15). Moderation analyses suggest effects of maladaptive interpersonal emotion regulation behaviors and repetitive negative thinking are stronger for interpersonal (versus non-interpersonal) stress; effects of repetitive negative thinking and excessive standards for self may be inflated by overreliance on self-report measures that fail to isolate psychological distress from objective experience. Findings have key implications for advancing stress generation theory and informing targets for intervention.

Mental Health, Discourse and Stigma

In this editorial to the special collection "Mental Health, Discourse and Stigma" we outline the concepts of mental, health, discourse and stigma as they are examined through sociolinguistic lenses. We examine the sociolinguistic approach to mental health and stigma and discuss the different theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches that have been applied in such contexts. Sociolinguistics views mental health and stigma as discursively constructed and constituted, i.e. they are both manifest, negotiated, reinforced or contested in the language that people use. We highlight existing gaps in sociolinguistic research and outline how it could enrich research in psychology and psychiatry and contribute to professional practice. Specifically, sociolinguistics provides well-established methodological tools to research the 'voices' of people with a history of mental ill health, their family, carers and mental health professionals in both online and off-line contexts. This is vital to develop targeted interventions and to contribute to de-stigmatization of mental health. To conclude, we highlight the importance of transdisciplinary research that brings together expertise in psychology, psychiatry and sociolinguistics.

Culture and gender modulate dlPFC integration in the emotional brain: evidence from dynamic causal modeling

Past research has recognized culture and gender variation in the experience of emotion, yet this has not been examined on a level of effective connectivity. To determine culture and gender differences in effective connectivity during emotional experiences, we applied dynamic causal modeling (DCM) to electroencephalography (EEG) measures of brain activity obtained from Chinese and American participants while they watched emotion-evoking images. Relative to US participants, Chinese participants favored a model bearing a more integrated dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) during fear v. neutral experiences. Meanwhile, relative to males, females favored a model bearing a less integrated dlPFC during fear v. neutral experiences. A culture-gender interaction for winning models was also observed; only US participants showed an effect of gender, with US females favoring a model bearing a less integrated dlPFC compared to the other groups. These findings suggest that emotion and its neural correlates depend in part on the cultural background and gender of an individual. To our knowledge, this is also the first study to apply both DCM and EEG measures in examining culture-gender interaction and emotion.

Parent–Child Attachment and Dynamic Emotion Regulation: A Systematic Review

Although there is evidence parent–child attachment security is associated with trait-like emotion indices, trait perspectives do not fully capture children's responses to context, an important emotion regulation component. This paper evaluates whether attachment is associated with two dynamic emotion indicators: emotion reactivity and emotion recovery. We review conceptual and empirical connections, describe the dynamic emotion perspective, discuss hypotheses, and review evidence. Our review (15 studies) shows that secure attachment was more consistently related to recovery than reactivity, avoidant attachment was related to low emotion reactivity and recovery, ambivalent attachment was associated with greater emotion reactivity, and disorganized attachment was related to high reactivity and recovery difficulties. We close by comparing trait-like and dynamic emotion conclusions then propose future research directions.

Microblog data analysis of emotional reactions to COVID-19 in China

To explore the emotional attitudes of microblog users in the different COVID-19 stages in China, this study used data mining and machine-learning methods to crawl 112,537 Sina COVID-19- related microblogs and conduct sentiment and group difference analyses. It was found that: (1) the microblog users' emotions shifted from negative to positive from the second COVID-19 pandemic phase; (2) there were no significant differences in the microblog users' emotions in the different regions; (3) males were more optimistic than females in the early stages of the pandemic; however, females were more optimistic than males in the last three stages; and (4) females posted more microblogs and expressed more sadness and fear while males expressed more anger and disgust. This research captured online information in real-time, with the results providing a reference for future research into public opinion and emotional reactions to crises.

Regulating Emotions through Cogenerative Dialogues to Sustain Student Engagement in Science Internships: A Case Study

Open inquiry learning and student–scientist partnerships are two effective ways of enhancing students’ science learning; however, due to their challenging and intimidating nature, students might encounter emotional breakdowns when engaging with them. To address communicative and emotional issues in high school students’ internships with scientists, this ethnographic case study integrated a pedagogical tool called cogenerative dialogues (cogen), which are conversations cogenerated by different stakeholders to reflect on participants’ experiences and help them reach collective decisions about the rules, roles, and responsibilities that govern their partnerships. Data sources include video recordings of internship activities, video recordings of cogenerative dialogues, students’ journals and interviews, and researchers’ field notes, pictures, and artifacts collected during the internship. Drawing on the emotion regulation framework, I demonstrate how cogen could be used as a powerful tool to reveal emotion suppression, share emotion regulation strategies, and transform negative emotions into positive emotions. The results of this case study show that cogen played an important role in addressing specific issues one at a time and sustaining student engagement throughout the internship program. The implications of cogen for sustainability and organizational health are discussed.

Cyberloafing behaviors among university students: Their relationships with positive and negative affect

With the technological advances, the use of digital devices, such as laptops, tablets, or smartphones in the educational setting has become prevalent among young people. Accordingly, there has been an increased concern among scholars on students' in-class Internet use for personal purposes; namely, 'cyberloafing'. Considerable research has demonstrated the adverse effects of in-class Internet use on students' learning environment and academic performance. The present study particularly investigates the relationship between cyberloafing behaviors and positive and negative affect among university students. It examines five different online activities including sharing, shopping, real-time updating, accessing online content, and gaming/gambling separately to gain greater insight into students' cyberloafing behaviors. The sample consisted of 267 undergraduate students who filled out questionnaires measuring cyberloafing behaviors, positive and negative affect, and demographical information including the use of the Internet and mobile technologies. The initial analyses showed that male students had higher scores in shopping, accessing online content, and gaming/gambling than females. The latent variable analysis revealed that among different activities of cyberloafing, accessing online content and gaming/gambling were positively correlated with positive affect, while sharing was positively associated with negative affect among students. The findings emphasize the importance of evaluating cyberloafing as a part of students' psychological well-being rather than a variable merely related to academic achievement. The findings of the study also enlighten researchers and educators in developing appropriate policies and interventions to manage misuse of the Internet in class.

The Potential Role of Awe for Depression: Reassembling the Puzzle

Recently, interest in the unique pathways linking discrete positive emotions to specific health outcomes has gained increasing attention, but the role of awe is yet to be elucidated. Awe is a complex and transformative emotion that can restructure individuals' mental frames so deeply that it could be considered a therapeutic asset for major mental health major issues, including depression. Despite sparse evidence showing a potential connection between depression and awe, this link has not been combined into a proposal resulting in specific intervention guidelines. The aim of this perspective was three-fold: (i) to provide a new unifying model of awe's functioning-the Matryoshka model; (ii) to show systematic and explicit connections between this emotion and depression; and (iii) to suggest specific guidelines of intervention utilizing the potential therapeutic role of awe for mental health, specifically for depression. This theoretical endeavor in its entirety has been framed within the health domain.

Dispositional Optimism and Context Sensitivity: Psychological Contributors to Frailty Status Among Elderly Outpatients

The association of resilience-related factors with frailty is a recent research topic. Dispositional optimism and context sensitivity are two psychological factors that differently contribute to individual resilience. This study aimed at investigating whether dispositional optimism and context sensitivity might contribute to a multifactorial model of frailty, together with established relevant factors such as cognitive and physical factors. This cross-sectional study involved 141 elderly outpatients (42 males and 99 females) aged ≥65 years, who were referred to the Geriatrics and Multidimensional Evaluation Clinic of the University Hospital of Messina. We used the following measures: the Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) to screen for global cognitive functioning; 4-m gait speed and handgrip strength to measure physical performance; a 35-item Frailty Index (FI) to evaluate patients’ frailty status; the revised Life Orientation Test (LOT-R) to gauge dispositional optimism; and the Context Sensitivity Index (CSI) to measure context sensitivity. We found that LOT-R (β = −0.190, p = 0.038), CSI (β = −0.191, p = 0.035), and MMSE (β = −0.466, p < 0.001) were all significantly associated with FI. Gait speed was only marginally associated with FI (β = −0.184, p = 0.053). The present study showed a novel association of dispositional optimism and context sensitivity with frailty among elderly outpatients. These preliminary findings support a multidimensional approach to frailty in which even peculiar psychological features might provide a significant contribution.

Positive psychotherapy in the treatment of traumatised Yezidi survivors of sexualised violence and genocide

So far, the psychotherapeutic treatment of patients with trauma spectrum disorders has most commonly been based on a disease model in which the normal reaction to trauma results in negative emotions, cognitions and behaviour which, in turn, cause a pathological state of mind or disorder. Here, trauma is associated with distress. This model focuses on identification, classification and treatment of the pathological and maladaptive modulations of the stress response that lead to psychological and social suffering and disability. In contrast to that, recent models in the Psychotherapy of the sequels of extreme life experiences, such as Positive Psychotherapy, have rather focussed on the building of competence, resilience and posttraumatic growth. In this article we summarise our experience in treating Yazidi women for their complex psychological traumata resulting from their experience of ISIS terror. We will use a short summary of published secondary data and reviews and use case examples from our work as primary data to discuss possible individual and collective resources that can help them to recover and to maintain a positive perspective on their person and the world, in spite of their terrible traumatic experiences. Original models of Positive Psychology already paid considerable attention to strength and resilience. The new approach of 'second wave' Positive Psychology expands on this, suggesting that negative emotions as well cultural factors must also be integrated. This approach appears to be particularly helpful in the treatment of this group of Yazidi women. Likewise, it seems to be promising when treating similar groups of people who survived extreme terror and were continuously exposed to genocidal environments.

Using automated computer vision and machine learning to code facial expressions of affect and arousal: Implications for emotion dysregulation research

As early as infancy, caregivers' facial expressions shape children's behaviors, help them regulate their emotions, and encourage or dissuade their interpersonal agency. In childhood and adolescence, proficiencies in producing and decoding facial expressions promote social competence, whereas deficiencies characterize several forms of psychopathology. To date, however, studying facial expressions has been hampered by the labor-intensive, time-consuming nature of human coding. We describe a partial solution: automated facial expression coding (AFEC), which combines computer vision and machine learning to code facial expressions in real time. Although AFEC cannot capture the full complexity of human emotion, it codes positive affect, negative affect, and arousal-core Research Domain Criteria constructs-as accurately as humans, and it characterizes emotion dysregulation with greater specificity than other objective measures such as autonomic responding. We provide an example in which we use AFEC to evaluate emotion dynamics in mother-daughter dyads engaged in conflict. Among other findings, AFEC (a) shows convergent validity with a validated human coding scheme, (b) distinguishes among risk groups, and (c) detects developmental increases in positive dyadic affect correspondence as teen daughters age. Although more research is needed to realize the full potential of AFEC, findings demonstrate its current utility in research on emotion dysregulation.

Understanding Emotion Inflexibility in Risk for Affective Disease: Integrating Current Research and Finding a Path Forward

Emotion-related disorders (e.g., depression, anxiety, stress, eating, substance and some personality disorders) include some of the most common, burdensome, and costly diseases worldwide. Central to many, if not all of these disorders, may be patterns of rigid or inflexible emotion responses. Indeed, theorists point to emotion in-flexibility as a potential cause or maintaining factor in emotion-related diseases. Despite the increasing prominence of emotion inflexibility in theories of affective disease, a comprehensive review of the developing empirical literature has not yet been conducted. Accordingly, this review will examine the three dominant lines of inquiry assessing emotion flexibility. These include: (1) the capacity to use and vary deliberate emotion regulation strategies, (2) the context sensitivity of spontaneous emotional responses, and (3) flexibility in the appraisal of emotional events and experiences. Moreover, current evidence suggests that each of these three lines of research may converge to suggest the interplay of two key biological dimensions in emotion inflexibility, threat sensitivity, and cognitive control, known to be impaired in patients with affective disorders. In short, this developing body of work suggests a path by which future research could explicate and even exploit the ties between emotion inflexibility and affective disease, contributing to the development of improved models of risk, assessment, and intervention, with broad implications for psychological health.

The Context Sensitivity Index (CSI): Measuring the Ability to Identify the Presence and Absence of Stressor Context Cues

The ability to accurately perceive cues to contextual demands across different situations has been identified as a crucial component of successful self-regulation. However, previous attempts to measure context sensitivity have suffered from serious methodological limitations, most notably the possibility that respondents may not possess sufficient knowledge of their own abilities, the confounding of perception of context with response to context, the use of only one or two contextual variations, and the failure to consider the abilities to both accurately detect contextual cues and accurately determine cue absence. This article reports a new, easy-to-administer scenario-based questionnaire measure, the Context Sensitivity Index (CSI), that addressed each of these limitations. The 20-item CSI was iteratively developed and normed using data from five studies to create separate indices to capture sensitivity to the presence of contextual cues (Cue Presence index) and to the relative absence of cues (Cue Absence index). We validated these indices against measures of flexibility, psychopathology, and other scales. Results are discussed in terms of the CSI's implications, limitations, and future applications.

How do marine and coastal citizen science experiences foster environmental engagement?

Citizen science programs enable community involvement in scientific research. In addition to fostering greater science literacy, some citizen science programs aim to foster engagement in environmental issues. However, few data are available to indicate whether and how citizen science programs can achieve greater environmental engagement. We survey individuals choosing to attend one of seventeen reef citizen science events and examine the extent to which attendees reported three indicators of greater environmental engagement: (i) willingness to share information, (ii) increased support for marine conservation and citizen science, and (iii) intentions to adopt a new behavior. Most participants reported being willing to share information about reef conservation (91%) and described increased support for marine science and conservation (87%). Half of participants (51%) reported intentions to adopt a new conservation behavior. We found that key elements of the citizen science experience associated with these outcomes were learning about actions to protect reefs and coasts (procedural learning), experiencing surprise, and experiencing negative emotions about environmental problems. Excitement was also associated with positive outcomes, but only in participants who were less likely to see themselves as environmental, or were less frequent visitors to reefs and coasts. Importantly, the association between factual learning and environmental engagement outcomes was limited or negative. These findings suggest that the way citizen science experiences make people feel, may be more important for fostering future environmental engagement than factual-based learning. When designing citizen science programs for community members, these findings provide a reminder to not focus on provision of factual information alone, but to highlight environmental impacts while providing meaningful experiences and building environmental skills.