Affective Styles and their Association with Anxiety and Depression in a Japanese Clinical Sample

Affective styles are assumed to play an important role in maintaining negative affect, including anxiety and depression. However, little is known about the longitudinal relationship between affective styles and symptoms. Therefore, we conducted a longitudinal study to examine the influence of affective styles, assessed using the Affective Style Questionnaire, on anxiety and depression among clinical populations in Japan. Using an online survey, 1,521 participants (406 with major depressive disorder; 479 with one or more anxiety disorders; 636 with both) answered the Affective Style Questionnaire and measures of emotion regulation, anxiety, and depression symptoms. Data were collected twice over two months. Confirmatory factor analyses replicated the same four-factor structure found in a previous sample of Japanese university students. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that the affective styles had a slightly greater effect on anxiety symptoms but not on depression compared to other common emotion regulation strategies, such as suppression and reappraisal measured by the ERQ. Limitations of this study were that it used online surveys, in which, participants' diagnostic statuses were based on unverifiable self-reports. In conclusion, the association of affective styles with anxiety and depression among the clinical populations was prospectively confirmed. Further study is needed to examine the association considering the combination or profiles of affective styles among different emotional disorders.

Feeling better or not: Adjusting affective style moderates the association between sleep duration and positive affect on next day

Affect is intertwined with sleep, yet how to adjust sleep duration to enhance affect remains unknown. Previous studies found that adjusting affective style, reflecting interindividual differences in emotion regulation, functions in processes where sleep modulates our affective state. Hence, this study examined whether and how it moderates the association between daily sleep duration and subsequent affect. An ambulatory assessment design was employed among 64 participants, wherein both within-person sleep duration and affect, and between-person affective styles were measured. Multilevel moderation analysis and simple-slope analysis were applied to test the moderation of adjusting affective style in the sleep-affect association. This study found that adjusting affective style significantly moderated the association between sleep duration and subsequent positive affect. Specifically, the association between sleep duration and subsequent positive affect was positive under higher adjusting affective style and negative under extremely lower adjusting affective style. However, such moderation was not observed in associations between subsequent negative affect and sleep duration. This study uncovers the relationship between sleep duration and subsequent affect, wherein the likelihood for individuals to reach more positive affective state by increasing sleeping duration might count on their ability of emotion regulation. Additionally, negative affect cannot be downregulated simply through long sleep duration.

Factor structure and validity of the Affective Style Questionnaire

Previous studies in different countries have shown variability in the factor structures of the Affective Style Questionnaire, possibly due to differences in cultures, translation, or statistical approaches. We ran exploratory factor analysis with oblique rotation using data from 2806 university students in Southern California. A four-factor structure was found instead of the three-factor structure found in the original Affective Style Questionnaire studies in the Northeastern United States. Support for concurrent and convergent validity was found for the Concealing and Adjusting factors. The Tolerating and Holding factors comprised two items each, making it difficult to recommend them in future studies.

The Mediating Role of Parenting Stress in the Relations Between Parental Emotion Regulation and Parenting Behaviors in Chinese Families of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders: A Dyadic Analysis

Little is known regarding the dynamic interactions between fathers and mothers in families of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) during the parenting process. This study used an actor-partner interdependence mediation (APIMeM) model to investigate the intrapersonal and interpersonal effects of emotion dysregulation and parenting stress on parenting behaviors among 211 pairs (total N = 422) of Chinese parents of children with ASD. The results indicated that for both fathers and mothers, there were significant indirect actor effects of parental emotion dysregulation on parents' own parenting behaviors through their own parenting stress. However, no significant direct or indirect partner effect was found in the analyses. These findings suggest that the emotional parenting dynamics occurred on the individual rather than the dyadic level in these families.

Dispositional mindfulness as a moderator between perceived stress and psychological symptoms in Chinese digestive tract cancer patients

Mindfulness has been garnering increased attention within the area of clinical psychology due to its theorized and empirical associations with psychological well-being. Using a sample of patients diagnosed with digestive tract cancer ( N = 292), we examined the relationship between perceived stress and psychological symptoms at varying levels of dispositional mindfulness. Results showed significant associations between perceived stress and psychological symptoms. More importantly, the relationship between perceived stress and psychological symptoms was only significant for patients with low, but not high, levels of dispositional mindfulness. Implications and future research directions were discussed.