Inter- and Intra-Individual Variation in Emotional Complexity: Methodological Considerations and Theoretical Implications

Subjective Cognitive Dysfunction in Chronic Illness: A Systematic Review and Meta-Synthesis

BACKGROUND

Qualitative studies have examined the experiences of subjective cognitive dysfunction in specific populations or specific disease stages, but there has not yet been a systematic synthesis and evaluation of findings related to perceptions of subjective cognitive dysfunction in nondementia-related chronic illnesses.

OBJECTIVE

The aim of this study was 2-fold: (1) to undertake a systematic review of experiences of subjective cognitive dysfunction in people with nondementia-related chronic disease and (2) to develop an explanatory framework to describe the experiences of living with subjective cognitive dysfunction.

METHODS

Four databases were systematically searched for studies on subjective cognitive dysfunction up to June 2023. Qualitative synthesis was conducted on the final sample (N = 25) using Sandelowski's adaptation of Nobilt and Hare's reciprocal transactional analysis method. Critical appraisal was completed using the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme checklist.

RESULTS

Through constant comparison of key concepts, findings were organized within 4 interrelated themes that informed a conceptual explanatory model of adapting to living with subjective cognitive dysfunction: (1) symptoms, (2) health care, (3) perceptions of self, and (4) relationships. Participants highlighted how subjective cognitive dysfunction affected interactions in health care settings and involved other symptoms that in turn complicated meaning, self-enhancement, and mastery.

CONCLUSIONS

Our model of the process of adapting provides a new way to conceptualize cognitive dysfunction in chronic illness and suggests opportunities for health care professionals to support patients and their families. The results highlight the need for more research to better understand the role of subjective cognitive dysfunction in nondementia-related chronic illnesses.The review protocol was registered in PROSPERO (CRD42021231410).

Interparental Positivity Spillover Theory: How Parents' Positive Relational Interactions Influence Children

Interparental interactions have an important influence on child well-being and development. Yet prior theory and research have primarily focused on interparental conflict as contributing to child maladjustment, which leaves out the critical question of how interparental positive interactions-such as expressed gratitude, capitalization, and shared laughter-may benefit child growth and development. In this article, we integrate theory and research in family, relationship, and affective science to propose a new framework for understanding how the heretofore underexamined positive interparental interactions influence children: interparental positivity spillover theory (IPST). IPST proposes that, distinct from the influence of conflict, interparental positive interactions spill over into children's experiences in the form of their (a) experience of positive emotions, (b) beneficially altered perceptions of their parents, and (c) emulation of their parents' positive interpersonal behaviors. This spillover is theorized to promote beneficial cognitive, behavioral, social, and physiological outcomes in children in the short term (i.e., immediately after a specific episode of interparental positivity, or on a given day) as well as cumulatively across time. As a framework, IPST generates a host of novel and testable predictions to guide future research, all of which have important implications for the mental health, well-being, and positive development of children and families.

Meta-analytic evidence that attachment insecurity is associated with less frequent experiences of discrete positive emotions

OBJECTIVE

Individual differences in attachment insecurity can have important implications for experiences of positive emotions. However, existing research on the link between attachment insecurity and positive emotional experiences has typically used a composite measure of positive emotions, overlooking the potential importance of differentiating discrete emotions.

METHOD

We conducted a meta-analysis of 10 cross-sectional samples (N = 3215), examining how attachment insecurity is associated with self-reported frequency of experiencing positive emotions, with a distinction made between more social (i.e., love and gratitude) and less social (i.e., peace and awe or curiosity) positive emotions.

RESULTS

High (vs. low) levels of both attachment anxiety and avoidance were associated with less frequent experience of positive emotions regardless of their social relevance. When analyzing each emotion separately, we found that attachment anxiety showed negative relations to all emotions except gratitude. Attachment avoidance was negatively associated with all emotions, and the link was even stronger with love (vs. peace, awe, or curiosity). Additional analyses of daily diary data revealed that attachment anxiety and avoidance were also negatively associated with daily experiences of positive emotions, regardless of social relevance.

CONCLUSION

Our results underscore the need to further investigate the mechanisms underlying insecure individuals' blunted positive emotional experiences.

Emotional Intelligence as Evaluative Activity: Theory, Findings, and Future Directions

The question of whether ability-related emotional intelligence (ability EI) predicts important life outcomes has attracted considerably more attention than the question of what ability EI consists of. In the present paper, the authors draw from the attitude and emotion literatures to suggest that the evaluation dimension of meaning is likely key in understanding how ability EI operates. Measures of ability EI predict the extent to which individuals can accurately evaluate words and measures of the latter type act as emotional intelligence measures. Extending this analysis, the paper reviews recent sources of data linking ability EI to attitudinal processes, such as those involved in attitude-behavior relationships and affective bipolarity. Individuals with high EI appear to experience their affect in more bipolar terms and they display evidence of greater decisiveness in their evaluations. Pursuing links of the present type will allow researchers to generate new predictions concerning the ability EI construct.

Variation in bittersweet nostalgic feelings and their divergent effects on daily well-being

Experimental manipulations of nostalgia that privilege positive aspects of the bittersweet emotion have led to the conclusion that nostalgia is a predominantly positive emotion, yet nostalgia covaries negatively with well-being in daily life. To reconcile this discrepancy, we developed and tested the bittersweet variation model of nostalgia that posits that (a) nostalgic feelings vary not only in intensity but also in valence (i.e., how bitter or sweet a nostalgic feeling is); (b) daily events influence the valence of nostalgic feelings; and (c) nostalgia's valence influences well-being. Across two daily diary studies (N = 151; 1,356 daily reports), we found that the valence of nostalgic feelings varied considerably within-persons. Daily positive events predicted more positively rated nostalgic feelings, whereas daily negative events predicted more negatively rated nostalgic feelings. Controlling for the effects of daily events on well-being, positive nostalgic feelings predicted greater well-being, whereas negative nostalgic feelings predicted lower well-being. To provide more robust causal evidence of the effect of nostalgia valence on well-being, we conducted two experiments (N = 445) in which we manipulated nostalgia valence by asking participants to write about positive nostalgic feelings (involving people they remain close to) or negative nostalgia feelings (involving people they no longer remain close to), mimicking typical nostalgic feelings in daily life. Positive nostalgic feelings improved well-being compared with negative nostalgic feelings. Thus, nostalgia is not inherently positive or negative. Rather, the effect of nostalgia on well-being depends on its valence, which is influenced by the eliciting event. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Trait Empathy Modulates Patterns of Personal and Social Emotions During the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused profound consequences on people's personal and social feelings worldwide. However, little is known about whether individual differences in empathy, a prosocial trait, may affect the emotional feelings under such threat. To address this, we measured 345 Chinese participants' personal emotions (e.g., active, nervous), social emotions (i.e., fearful and empathetic feelings about various social groups), and their empathy traits during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using the representational similarity analysis (RSA), we calculated the pattern similarity of personal emotions and found the similarity between the positive and negative emotions was less in the high vs. low empathy groups. In addition, people with high (vs. low) empathy traits were more likely to have fearful and sympathetic feelings about the disease-related people (i.e., depression patients, suspected COVID-19 patients, COVID-19 patients, flu patients, SARS patients, AIDS patients, schizophrenic patients) and showed more pattern dissimilarity in the two social feelings toward the disease-related people. These findings suggest a prominent role of trait empathy in modulating emotions across different domains, strengthening the polarization of personal emotions as well as enlarging social feelings toward a set of stigmatized groups when facing a pandemic threat.

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.

Sleep, Positive Affect, and Circulating Interleukin-6 in Women With Temporomandibular Joint Disorder

OBJECTIVE

Systemic inflammation is commonly observed in idiopathic chronic pain conditions, including temporomandibular joint disorder (TMD). Trait positive affect (PA) is associated with lower inflammation in healthy controls, but those effects may be threatened by poor sleep. The associations between PA with proinflammatory cytokine activity and potential moderation by sleep in chronic pain are not known. We thus investigated the association between PA and circulating interleukin-6 (IL-6) and moderation of that association by sleep in a sample of women with TMD and sleep difficulties.

METHODS

Participants (n = 110) completed the insomnia severity index and provided blood samples at five intervals throughout an evoked pain testing session. They then completed a 14-day diary assessing sleep and affect, along with wrist actigraphy.

RESULTS

There was not a significant main effect of PA on resting or pain-evoked IL-6 (b = 0.04, p = .33). Diary total sleep time (b = -0.002, p = .008), sleep efficiency (b = -0.01, p = .005), sleep onset latency (b = 0.006, p = .010), and wake after sleep onset (b = 0.003, p = .033) interacted with PA to predict IL-6, such that PA inversely predicted IL-6 at higher levels of total sleep time and sleep efficiency and at lower levels of sleep onset latency and wake after sleep onset. Surprisingly, when sleep was poor, PA predicted greater IL-6.

CONCLUSIONS

The potential salutary effects of PA on resting IL-6 erode when sleep is poor, underscoring the importance of considering sleep in conceptual and intervention models of TMD.

An Empirical Study on the Evaluation of Emotional Complexity in Daily Life

Emotional complexity means diversity, universality, and differentiation of individual emotions. This research consisted of two studies to demonstrate the constitution of the emotional complexity. In Study 1, the participants were asked to use 10 emotional words to record the variation of emotions over 30 days in daily life. In Study 2, the experimental materials were enriched. The participants were required to note the emotions with the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule in a 3-day holiday—all the individuals in the two studies needed to record the most important emotional event. As a result, the youth experienced complex emotions every day. Emotional complexity indicators included covariation index (r), component index (C_pc and C_unshared), granularity index (G_e, G_p, and G_n), and variability index (V_p and V_n). A four-factor model reflected a good model fit, with 𝜒²/df = 0.33, CFI = 1.00, TLI = 1.03, RMSEA = 0.000 (0.00, 0.20), SRMR = 0.003, including positive differentiation, covariation of positive affect and negative affect, negative differentiation, and emotional variation. These indicators may reflect the complex experiences in everyday life. The results shed light on the emotional experience that can change greatly within 1 day and on episodes of emotional disruption resulting from an important event coupled with excessive excitement or extreme tension.

Perceiving societal pressure to be happy is linked to poor well-being, especially in happy nations

Happiness is a valuable experience, and societies want their citizens to be happy. Although this societal commitment seems laudable, overly emphasizing positivity (versus negativity) may create an unattainable emotion norm that ironically compromises individual well-being. In this multi-national study (40 countries; 7443 participants), we investigate how societal pressure to be happy and not sad predicts emotional, cognitive and clinical indicators of well-being around the world, and examine how these relations differ as a function of countries’ national happiness levels (collected from the World Happiness Report). Although detrimental well-being associations manifest for an average country, the strength of these relations varies across countries. People’s felt societal pressure to be happy and not sad is particularly linked to poor well-being in countries with a higher World Happiness Index. Although the cross-sectional nature of our work prohibits causal conclusions, our findings highlight the correlational link between social emotion valuation and individual well-being, and suggest that high national happiness levels may have downsides for some.

Expertise in emotion: A scoping review and unifying framework for individual differences in the mental representation of emotional experience

Expertise refers to outstanding skill or ability in a particular domain. In the domain of emotion, expertise refers to the observation that some people are better at a range of competencies related to understanding and experiencing emotions, and these competencies may help them lead healthier lives. These individual differences are represented by multiple constructs including emotional awareness, emotional clarity, emotional complexity, emotional granularity, and emotional intelligence. These constructs derive from different theoretical perspectives, highlight different competencies, and are operationalized and measured in different ways. The full set of relationships between these constructs has not yet been considered, hindering scientific progress and the translation of findings to aid mental and physical well-being. In this article, we use a scoping review procedure to integrate these constructs within a shared conceptual space. Scoping reviews provide a principled means of synthesizing large and diverse literature in a transparent fashion, enabling the identification of similarities as well as gaps and inconsistencies across constructs. Using domain-general accounts of expertise as a guide, we build a unifying framework for expertise in emotion and apply this to constructs that describe how people understand and experience their own emotions. Our approach offers opportunities to identify potential mechanisms of expertise in emotion, encouraging future research on those mechanisms and on educational or clinical interventions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Racial Incivility in Everyday Life: A Conceptual Framework for Linking Process, Person, and Context

Psychologists use the term racial microaggressions to describe subtle forms of everyday racial incivility and discrimination reported by members of historically underrepresented groups. Growing evidence links self-reported experiences of racial microaggressions to health. Drawing on life-course perspectives on stress, biopsychosocial models of racism, and daily-process research, I propose a conceptual framework for investigating daily stress processes (e.g., reactivity, recovery, appraisal, coping), cumulative stressor exposures (e.g., race-related traumas, major life events, nonevents, chronic stressors), and social structural factors (e.g., institutions, social roles, statuses) that may affect the experience of racial microaggressions in everyday life. An underlying assumption is that microaggressions are dynamic in character, can vary across individuals, and are shaped by the interplay of stressor exposures across multiple timescales and levels of analysis. The article concludes by inviting researchers to use methods that account for dynamic features of everyday racialized experiences, giving sufficient attention to process, person, and context.

Emotional regularity: associations with personality, psychological health, and occupational outcomes

Emotional regularity is the degree to which a person maintains and returns to a set of emotional states over time. The present investigation examined associations between emotional regularity and extant emotion measures as well as psychologically relevant dimensions of personality, health, and real-world occupational outcomes. Participants included 598 U.S. adults who provided daily experience sampling reports on their emotional states for approximately two months. Results suggest that emotional regularity was related to, but distinct from, well-established measures of emotion including emotional intensity, variability, covariation, inertia, granularity, and emodiversity. Furthermore, emotional regularity significantly predicted measures of personality, psychological health, and occupational outcomes even when accounting for extant emotion measures and sociodemographic covariates. Finally, it explained modest (7.5%) improvement (in terms of cross-validated RSq.) over baseline models containing emotional intensity, variability, and sociodemographic covariates. These findings suggest that emotional regularity may provide an important indicator of healthy emotional functioning and may be a promising area for further scientific discovery.

Bipolar or Independent? Relations Between Positive and Negative Affect Vary by Emotional Intelligence

Individuals who are intelligent concerning their emotions should experience them differently. In particular, being conversant with the valence dimension that is key to emotions should reasonably result in emotional experiences that are more bipolar with respect to this dimension. Pursuant of these ideas, three studies (total N = 335) assessed emotional intelligence in ability-related terms (ability EI). The same participants also reported on their recent experiences of positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA) at work (studies 1 and 2) and/or their day-to-day emotional experiences within a daily diary protocol (study 3). Within each of these studies, ability EI moderated the relationship between experiences of PA and NA, such that the PA-NA relationship was more bipolar at higher levels of EI. These findings are discussed with respect to their implications for debates about bipolarity as well as for their value in highlighting ways in which the ability EI dimension operates.

Effects of Pain Reduction by Self-Natural Posture Exercise on Affective Complexity in Women: The Moderating Effect of Self-Regulation

This study aimed to investigate the effects of pain reduction and self-regulation efficacy on affective complexity in female patients with chronic pain after participation in an exercise therapy program—Self-Natural Posture Exercise (SNPE)—within the theoretical framework of the Dynamic Model of Affect. A 12-week SNPE program (thrice a week, 70 min per session) was conducted with 101 women with chronic pain lasting longer than 6 months. Pre- versus post-SNPE difference in the correlation between positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA) was examined through Fisher’s z test, and the moderation effect was confirmed through hierarchical regression analysis. Upon completion of the program, participants experienced pain [M_pre = 5.68 (SD_pre = 1.96) vs. M_post = 3.12 (SD_post = 2.16)] and stress reduction [M_pre = 2.92 (SD_pre = 0.95) vs. M_post = 2.62 (SD_post = 0.86)], higher satisfaction with life [M_pre = 4.25 (SD_pre = 1.20) vs. M_post = 4.80 (SD_post = 1.15)], and decreases in the negative correlation between PA and NA (r_pre = −0.541 vs. r_post = −0.379). Furthermore, participation in the SNPE program neutralized the impact of PA_post on NA_post (β = −0.03) in participants with high self-regulation and pain reduction. These results suggest that self-regulation helps to increase SNPE adherence, which would induce pain reduction and restore affective complexity. Based on the strength model of self-control, to increase the pain reduction through exercise therapy, the instructor should ensure that the participants are not being ego depleted.

Subjective Age and Emotion Covariation: Findings From Two Daily Experience Studies

OBJECTIVES

This article focuses on an aspect of emotional complexity as seen in the covariation between positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA). Lifespan theories predict distinctive patterns of change in emotion covariation with chronological age. Nevertheless, research shows mixed evidence with most studies failing to find a significant connection between chronological age and emotion covariation. We propose to look beyond chronological age and assess the relationship between subjective age and emotion covariation. Subjective age refers to how old one perceives oneself to be, and therefore may be more pertinent to one's emotional experience than chronological age. We further explored whether the relationship between subjective age and emotion covariation is modified by chronological age.

METHOD

We used data from 2 daily diary study samples (N = 188, mean age = 57.84, range = 29-100, and N = 334, mean age = 58.15, range = 30-90).

RESULTS

Multilevel models showed that individuals who perceived themselves as older showed stronger inverse PA-NA relationship, reflecting lower emotional complexity. Chronological age (net of subjective age) and emotion covariation were unrelated in both samples. Moreover, in Study 2 there was a 3-way interaction between PA, subjective age and chronological age, suggesting that subjective age is more strongly related to emotion covariation among older adults than among younger adults.

DISCUSSION

The relationship between subjective age and emotion covariation is discussed in light of lifespan theories.

Life Events, Emotions, and Immune Function: Evidence from Whitehall II Cohort Study

Stressful life events have been shown to increase vulnerability to infections. However, the effects may be dependent on specific emotional responses associated with these events. In general, negative emotions are thought to exacerbate and positive emotions to protect from the adverse effects of stressors on health. In this study, we adopted an evolutionary and functionalist perspective on emotions and hypothesized that both positive and negative emotions in response to stressful events are protective, whereas absence of emotional reactions exacerbates vulnerability to infections. We assessed immune function using lymphocytes to white blood cells ratio as a proxy for current viral infection in 3,008 British civil workers (30% women). No main effect of stressful life events or emotions on lymphocyte ratio was observed in either sex. However, in men, there was an interaction of life events with both positive and negative emotions as well as a combined measure of general affect. Supporting our hypothesis, stressful life events were associated with impaired immune function in men who reported very low levels of both positive and negative emotions but not in others. We discuss potential benefits of negative and positive emotions in the context of stress and immunity.

A double-edged sword? Sub-types of psychological flexibility are associated with distinct psychiatric disorders

INTRODUCTION

Psychological flexibility is associated with both better and worse health outcomes. The objective of this study was to differentiate two types of psychological flexibility - affective instability and interpersonal flexibility - and to estimate associations with psychiatric disorders.

METHOD

Study participants were drawn from a large outpatient psychiatric sample that completed standard assessment batteries at an academic hospital (N = 1,358, 55.5% males, mean age=43.87, SD=16.57).

RESULTS

Less interpersonal flexibility was associated with depressive diagnoses. Greater affective instability was associated with bipolar disorder and was negatively associated with psychotic disorders, but showed no association with depressive disorders.

CONCLUSION

Differing degrees of flexibility and instability in emotional and interpersonal domains may be uniquely associated with specific classes of psychological disorders.