Emodiversity, health, and well-being in the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) daily diary study

Older adults' subjective aging perceptions, mentalization, and social relationships: a micro-longitudinal study

OBJECTIVES

Social relationships are associated with various positive physical, psychological, and emotional outcomes in older adults. In line with the growing understanding of the role of subjective views of aging (VoA) for older adults' quality of life, the current work examines how daily fluctuations in VoA affect social relationships. Moreover, as the ability to mentalize others' states of mind (i.e. Theory of Mind) considerably enhances such relationships, this study assesses whether mentalization abilities mediate the VoA-social relationships link.

METHOD

Eighty-two Israeli older adults (mean age = 73.44, SD = 8.64, range = 60-95) completed a baseline online questionnaire containing background information, and subsequently filled out daily online questionnaires assessing ageist attitudes, subjective age, mentalization abilities, and positive social relationships for 14 consecutive days.

RESULTS

Positive VoA (reduced ageist attitudes and/or a young subjective age) were associated with enhanced mentalization and positive relationships on a given day and in time-lagged analyses. Moreover, mentalization mediated the effect of previous-day VoA on next-day positive social relationships. VoA also mediated the effect of previous-day mentalization on next-day positive social relationships.

CONCLUSION

The study highlights the importance of mentalization capabilities for maintaining positive VoA/social relationships and expands the understanding of underlying factors associated with meaningful and close relationships in older adults.

Variety in Pleasant Activities is Associated with Improved Mental Health: Evidence from Two National Samples of U.S. Adults

Engaging in a wide range of pleasant activities may provide mental health benefits, particularly for those genetically predisposed to depression. This study examined associations between pleasant activity variety, mental health, and genetic vulnerability in two U.S. cohort studies (N = 2,088). Participants reported depressive symptoms, mental healthcare visits, and engagement in pleasant activities over the past month. Greater variety of pleasant activities was associated with fewer depressive symptoms in both study samples. Individuals engaging in more diverse pleasant activities also had fewer mental health visits. Individuals with a higher genetic risk for depression experienced a stronger negative association between variety of pleasant activities and depressive symptoms compared to those with a lower genetic risk. These results highlight the potential of diverse pleasant activities as a means to enhance well-being, particularly among individuals genetically susceptible to depression.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42761-023-00225-x.

Speaking Well and Feeling Good: Age-Related Differences in the Affective Language of Resting State Thought

Despite the prevalence and importance of resting state thought for daily functioning and psychological well-being, it remains unclear how such thoughts differ between young and older adults. Age-related differences in the affective tone of resting state thoughts, including the affective language used to describe them, could be a novel manifestation of the positivity effect, with implications for well-being. To examine this possibility, a total of 77 young adults (M = 24.9 years, 18-35 years) and 74 cognitively normal older adults (M = 68.6 years, 58-83 years) spoke their thoughts freely during a think-aloud paradigm across two studies. The emotional properties of spoken words and participants' retrospective self-reported affective experiences were computed and examined for age differences and relationships with psychological well-being. Study 1, conducted before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, revealed that older adults exhibited more diversity of positive, but not negative, affectively tinged words compared to young adults and more positive self-reported thoughts. Despite being conducted virtually during the COVID-19 pandemic, study 2 replicated many of study 1's findings, generalizing results across samples and study contexts. In an aggregated analysis of both samples, positive diversity predicted higher well-being beyond other metrics of affective tone, and the relationship between positive diversity and well-being was not moderated by age. Considering that older adults also exhibited higher well-being, these results hint at the possibility that cognitively healthy older adults' propensity to experience more diverse positive concepts during natural periods of restful thought may partly underlie age-related differences in well-being and reveal a novel expression of the positivity effect.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42761-024-00239-z.

Not all negative emotions are equal - Sadness and anger develop differently and their adaptivity is age-graded

We argue that a comprehensive understanding of emotional development across adulthood must go beyond broad dimensions of affect and consider discrete emotions. Current evidence focuses on sadness and anger, two negative emotions that exert contrasting age trajectories because anger has high adaptive value in young adulthood, when people have abundant resources and need to carve out a niche in society, whereas sadness has high adaptive value in old age, a time of declining resources that requires adaptation to increasingly unattainable goals. We conclude that our position about the age-graded experience and adaptive value of emotions should hold for a variety of negative and positive emotions.

Positive event diversity: Relationship with personality and well-being

OBJECTIVE

Examining the personality and well-being correlates of positive event diversity.

BACKGROUND

Past research has highlighted that personality traits are linked to the frequency of daily positive events. This study is the first to examine positive event diversity, the extent to which positive events are spread across multiple types of positive life domains, as well as its personality and well-being correlates.

METHOD

We conducted parallel analyses of three daily diary datasets (Ns = 1919, 744, and 1392) that included evening assessment of daily positive events and affective well-being. The Big Five personality traits were assessed in baseline surveys.

RESULTS

Positive Event Diversity was related to higher person-mean daily positive affect but not negative affect. Higher Extraversion, Agreeableness, Openness, and lower Neuroticism were correlated with more positive event diversity. These associations became nonsignificant when controlling for positive event frequency. Positive event frequency moderated the link between positive event diversity and person-mean affect, such that higher positive event diversity was associated with higher negative and lower positive affect for people who experienced more frequent positive events.

CONCLUSIONS

No consistent evidence was found for personality as a moderator of the positive event diversity-well-being link across the three studies. Further, the well-being implications of positive event diversity may be better understood when interpreting them alongside indexes of positive event frequency.

Childhood abuse and neglect and profiles of adult emotion dynamics

Childhood maltreatment (CM) is experienced by ∼40% of all children at major personal and societal costs. The divergent associations between emotional, physical, and sexual abuse or neglect in childhood and differences in adult emotional functioning and regulation were examined in terms of daily emotion intensity, variability, instability, inertia, and diversity, reported over 30 days by 290 Dutch aged 19-73. Participants described their abuse/neglect experiences retrospectively using the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ). Dissecting CM effects on adult emotion dynamics may inform theories on the ontogenesis and functioning of emotions, on effects of abuse and neglect, to better understand (dys)functional emotional development, and to prevent their adverse sequelae. Structural equation models (SEM) showed that most types of CM were associated with specific patterns of emotion dynamics, and only emotional abuse had no unique effects on the emotional dynamic indices. Emotional neglect was associated with most measures of emotion dynamics (i.e., less intense, variable, unstable, and diverse emotions). Sexual abuse associated with increases and physical neglect decreases in negative affect variability and instability. Physical abuse was associated with inertia but with a small effect size. Social contact frequency did not mediate much of the relationship between CM types and emotion dynamics.

Profiles of historical loss and childhood trauma as predictors of mental and cardiometabolic health in American Indian adults

Cardiometabolic disease and mental health conditions are two major contributors to persistent inequities in health and life expectancy for American Indian adults. The atrocities associated with European colonization are linked to intergenerational psychological and emotional wounding (i.e., historical trauma) and high incidence of childhood trauma. Prior work has examined the independent relationships of childhood trauma and thoughts about historical loss with cardiometabolic and mental health in American Indians. In the current work, we used a data-driven approach to identify profiles of childhood trauma and frequency of thoughts about historical loss, and then examined how these profiles related to cardiometabolic and mental health in a sample of American Indian adults from across the United States (N = 727). We found that a profile characterized by high levels of childhood trauma and high frequency of thoughts about historical losses was associated with the greatest risk for mental health conditions. The profile characterized by the highest levels of childhood trauma and by moderate frequency of thoughts about historical losses was associated with the largest risk of cardiometabolic conditions. The findings represent an important first step towards understanding how childhood trauma and thoughts about historical loss may simultaneously inform enduring inequities in American Indian health.

Social activity diversity as a lifestyle factor to alleviate loneliness and chronic pain

OBJECTIVE

This study examined whether social activity diversity, a novel concept indicating an active social lifestyle, is associated with lower subsequent loneliness, and decreased loneliness is further associated with less chronic pain over time.

METHODS

2528 adults from the Midlife in the United States Study (Mage = 54 yrs) provided data at baseline (2004-2009) and 9 years later. Social activity diversity was operationalized by Shannon's entropy that captures the variety and evenness of engagement across 13 social activities (0-1). Participants reported feelings of loneliness (1-5), presence of any chronic pain (yes/no), the degree of chronic pain-related interference (0-10), and the number of chronic pain locations. Indirect associations of social activity diversity with chronic pain through loneliness were evaluated, adjusting for sociodemographics, living alone, and chronic conditions.

RESULTS

Higher social activity diversity at baseline (B = -0.21, 95%CI = [-0.41, -0.02]) and an increase in social activity diversity over time (B = -0.24, 95%CI = [-0.42, -0.06]) were associated with lower loneliness 9 years later. An increase in loneliness was associated with 24% higher risk of any chronic pain (95%CI = [1.11, 1.38]), greater chronic pain-related interference (B = 0.36, 95%CI = [0.14, 0.58]), and 17% increase in the number of chronic pain locations (95%CI = [1.10, 1.25]) at the follow-up, after controlling for corresponding chronic pain at baseline and covariates. Social activity diversity was not directly was associated with chronic pain, but there were indirect associations through its association with loneliness.

CONCLUSION

Diversity in social life may be associated with decreased loneliness, which in turn, may be associated with less chronic pain, two of the prevalent concerns in adulthood.

Emodiversity evaluation of remote workers through health monitoring based on intra-day emotion sampling

Introduction

In recent years, the widespread shift from on-site to remote work has led to a decline in employees' mental health. Consequently, this transition to remote work poses several challenges for both employees and employers. To address these challenges, there is an urgent need for techniques to detect declining mental health in employees' daily lives. Emotion-based health assessment, which examines emotional diversity (emodiversity) experienced in daily life, is a possible solution. However, the feasibility of emodiversity remains unclear, especially from the perspectives of its applicability to remote workers and countries other than Europe and the United States. This study investigated the association between subjective mental health decline and emotional factors, such as emodiversity, as well as physical conditions, in remote workers in Japan.

Method

To explore this association, we conducted a consecutive 14-day prospective observational experiment on 18 Japanese remote workers. This experiment comprised pre-and post-questionnaire surveys, physiological sensing, daytime emotion self-reports, and subjective health reports at end-of-day. In daytime emotion self-reports, we introduced smartphone-based experience sampling (also known as ecological momentary assessment), which is suitable for collecting context-dependent self-reports precisely in a recall bias-less manner. For 17 eligible participants (mean ± SD, 39.1 ± 9.1 years), we evaluated whether and how the psycho-physical characteristics, including emodiversity, changed on subjective mental health-declined experimental days after analyzing descriptive statistics.

Results

Approximately half of the experimental days (46.3 ± 18.9%) were conducted under remote work conditions. Our analysis showed that physical and emotional indices significantly decreased on mental health-declined days. Especially on high anxiety and depressive days, we found that emodiversity indicators significantly decreased (global emodiversity on anxiety conditions, 0.409 ± 0.173 vs. 0.366 ± 0.143, p = 0.041), and positive emotional experiences were significantly suppressed (61.5 ± 7.7 vs. 55.5 ± 6.4, p < 0.001).

Discussion

Our results indicated that the concept of emodiversity can be applicable even to Japanese remote workers, whose cultural background differs from that of individuals in Europe and the United States. Emodiversity showed significant associations with emotion dysregulation-related mental health deterioration, suggesting the potential of emodiversity as useful indicators in managing such mental health deterioration among remote workers.

Capturing Hassles and Uplifts in Adolescents' Daily Lives: Links with Physical and Mental Well-Being

Despite the salient impacts of daily experiences, scarce research has measured various daily minor experiences and evaluated their influences on adolescent well-being in their daily life. This study assessed the exposure to multiple aspects of daily hassles and uplifts in adolescents' daily lives, and examined the links between the level, types, and diversity of these exposures and adolescents' daily physical and mental well-being. Ninety-nine adolescents (12-17 years old, M = 14.6, 51.5% White, 53.5% female) completed a 30-day daily diary study. Multilevel modeling revealed different associations between the level and types of daily hassles and uplifts and adolescent well-being on the same day. Experiencing diverse daily hassles was linked with more emotional problems, and experiencing diverse daily uplifts was related with lower negative affect. The findings underscore the importance of including level, types, and diversity of both daily hassles and uplifts in research to better characterize adolescents' daily experiences. The findings also highlight the concurrent and potential cumulative effects of daily minor social events and mundane experiences in adolescent development in their daily lives.

Negative emodiversity is associated with emotional eating in adolescents: An examination of emotion dynamics in daily life

INTRODUCTION

Emotional eating is a mental health concern, common in adolescents, that develops as a result of their tendency to use high-energy food to regulate their fluctuating emotions. Due to their highly fluctuating emotional life, adolescents tend to have unique within-person profiles of emotional experiences that change across moments and days, often lost in global assessments of emotions. Hence, it is imperative to examine individual differences in dynamics of emotions, as experienced in daily life, in relation to emotional eating in adolescents.

METHODS

In an Ecological Momentary Assessment study, we examined individual differences in three within-person dynamic characteristics (baseline levels, intraindividual variability, and emodiversity) of emotions in 158 dominantly Hispanic adolescents in the United States, aged 14-17 years old, predicting trait-level emotional eating.

RESULTS

Results indicated that higher negative emodiversity, baselines, and variability in stress were predictive of emotional eating in adolescents. When all considered together, negative emodiversity (i.e., variety of the types of negative emotions experienced in one's daily life) remained the only significant predictor of emotional eating.

CONCLUSIONS

This study affirms the importance of diversity in emotional experiences in relation to emotional eating, particularly in daily contexts of adolescents' lives. Additionally, the study emphasizes the importance of distinguishing between diversity (i.e., variety in types) in positive versus negative emotional experiences with regard to emotional eating. By taking into account the ecological validity of adolescents' daily lives and individual differences in dynamical changes in emotions, we are taking a step forward by shedding light on how the dynamics of negative emotions-in terms of within-person baselines, variability, and diversity-might be related to general levels of emotional eating in adolescents.

Advancing the Study of Resilience to Daily Stressors

Historically, studies of childhood and adult resilience have typically focused on adaptation to chronic life adversities, such as poverty and maltreatment, or isolated and potentially traumatic events, such as bereavement and serious illness. Here, we present a complementary view and suggest that stressors experienced in daily life may also forecast individual health and well-being. We argue that daily process approaches that incorporate intensive sampling of individuals in natural settings can provide powerful insights into unfolding adaptational processes. In making this argument, we review studies that link intraindividual dynamics with diverse health-related phenomena. Findings from this research provide support for a multiple-levels-analysis perspective that embraces greater unity in pivotal resilience constructs invoked across childhood and adult literatures. Drawing on insights and principles derived from life-span theory, we conclude by outlining promising directions for future work and considering their broader implications for the field of resilience.

What makes life enjoyable at an older age? Experiential wellbeing, daily activities, and satisfaction with life in general

OBJECTIVES

This study uses a broad range of activities to examine how the type of activity, its social context, associated stress, importance, and the level of effort required are linked with activity enjoyment. Using aggregated data from all activities, it analyses the association between the experiential wellbeing of individuals and their satisfaction with life in general.

METHOD

The data set included 1809 activities, reported by 200 non-institutionalised adults, aged 65 and above, living in Poland. Activity data were collected using the experience sampling method. Multilevel mixed effects models examined what makes an activity enjoyable for older adults. Linear regression models examined the relationship between aggregated subjective activity characteristics and satisfaction with life in general.

RESULTS

The most enjoyable activities were religious practice, childcare, and socialising. Enjoyment was positively associated with perceived activity importance, inversely associated with stress, and formed a U-shaped association with effort. On the aggregated level, a higher mean enjoyment predicted a higher satisfaction with life in general, whereas the opposite was the case for the mean importance. However, having greater variance in importance was associated with higher satisfaction with life.

CONCLUSIONS

Enjoyable daily activities may boost the global wellbeing of older adults. Balancing high-effort and low-effort activities may provide additional benefits. This study points to new directions for research and shows that activities rarely studied in the existing literature have significant effects on the wellbeing of older adults.

Diversity of daily activities is associated with greater hippocampal volume

Greater engagement in a range of daily activities is associated with better cognitive functioning (Lee et al., Lee et al., 2020). The hippocampus, a subcortical brain structure implicated in learning, memory, spatial navigation and other aspects of cognitive functioning, may be structurally sensitive to exposure to and engagement with novel experiences and environments. The present study tested whether greater activity diversity, defined as the range of common daily activities engaged in and the proportion of time spent in each, is associated with larger hippocampal volume. Greater diversity of activities, as measured using daily diaries across an 8-day period, was related to greater hippocampal volume averaged across the left and right hemispheres, even when adjusting for estimated intracranial volume, total activity time, sociodemographic factors, and self-reported physical health. These findings are broadly consistent with nonhuman animal studies, demonstrating a link between enriched environments and structural changes to the hippocampus. Future longitudinal and experimental work can elucidate causal and directional relationships between diversity of daily activities and hippocampal volume.

Anticipatory Coping Diversity: Implications for Emotional, Physical, and Cognitive Reactivity to Daily Stressors

OBJECTIVES

This study examines the concept of anticipatory coping diversity, reflected in the evenness and richness of anticipatory coping strategies. The overarching goal of the present study is to show how individual differences in anticipatory coping diversity are associated with emotional, physical, and cognitive reactivity to daily stressors, and to examine whether these dynamic characteristics might differ between younger and older adults.

METHOD

107 younger (M age = 19.44, range 18-36) and 116 older (M age = 64.71, range 60-90) participants reported on 1627 total days via an online daily diary study. Participants reported baseline demographic information (Day 1) and anticipatory coping, stressor exposure, negative affect, physical symptoms, and memory failures (Days 2-9). Anticipatory coping diversity was indexed at the person level using Shannon's entropy to capture the evenness and richness of anticipatory coping strategies across stressors.

RESULTS

People with more anticipatory coping diversity were less emotionally reactive, but more physically and cognitively reactive to daily stressors. Older adults exhibited less anticipatory coping diversity than younger adults, but the patterns of anticipatory coping diversity differences in reactivity appeared to be consistent across younger and older adults.

DISCUSSION

Anticipatory coping diversity reflects a useful index within the stress process that is associated with benefits as well as costs. These findings bridge dispositional and contextual approaches to coping and highlight the importance of understanding how deployment of coping strategies are related to well-being across the adult lifespan.

Rich and Balanced Experiences of Daily Emotions are Associated with Activity Diversity Across Adulthood

OBJECTIVES

Studies demonstrate the association between diverse emotions and health. However, we know little about how these emotions are related to activities in daily life. This study examined whether the diversity of daily activities ("activity diversity") is associated with the diversity of both positive and negative daily emotions ("emodiversity") in adulthood. We also examined if these associations differed by age.

METHODS

Two separate samples of participants from the Midlife in the United States Study II (M2: 2004-2009, n=2,012, Mage=56yrs) and Refresher (MR: 2012-2016, n=779, Mage=47yrs) provided activity and emotion data for eight consecutive days. Using Shannon's entropy, we constructed activity diversity and emodiversity (positive, negative) scores. Analyses adjusted for sociodemographic and health characteristics, total activity time, mean positive/negative emotions, and number of days with positive/negative emotion data.

RESULTS

Greater activity diversity was associated with greater positive emodiversity and greater negative emodiversity in both samples. In the M2 sample, the association between activity diversity and positive emodiversity was stronger among relatively younger adults, such the positive association among those aged 33-44 years was greater than that observed among those aged 68-84 years. Results held after adjusting for time spent in each of the activities or when using different emodiversity metrics (Gini or Simpson coefficients).

DISCUSSION

Broad and even participation of daily activities may provide more opportunities to experience rich and balanced emotions. Findings suggest that the association between activity diversity and emodiversity exists across adulthood, underscoring the value of including information about daily activities when examining emotional experiences across the lifespan.

Variety is the spice of life: How emotional diversity is associated with better student engagement and achievement

BACKGROUND

Past studies on emotions have mostly focused on mean levels of positive and negative emotions. In recent years, the concept of emotional diversity (emodiversity) which refers to the variety and relative abundance of emotions was introduced and was found to have important implications for mental and physical health. However, its role in the educational context is unexplored.

AIMS

The current study aimed to examine how emodiversity is associated with indicators of optimal school functioning including engagement and achievement.

SAMPLE(S)

Four hundred four Filipino high school students (M = 14.34, SD = 1.47; 55% female) and 10 class teachers participated in the study.

METHODS

Students completed surveys measuring their emotions, emodiversity, and engagement, while class teachers rated their students' engagement. Finally, grades from the school were obtained at the end of the semester.

RESULTS

Positive emodiversity-diversity of positive emotional experiences-was an independent predictor of academic engagement and school achievement over and above mean levels of positive and negative emotions. These results were found to generalize to self-reported and teacher-reported outcomes as well as more objective measures of achievement. Moreover, findings remained robust after controlling for demographic variables such as gender and year level.

CONCLUSIONS

Positive emodiversity is associated with higher engagement and achievement suggesting the importance of emodiversity in the educational context.