Exploring Within-Person Variability in Qualitative Negative and Positive Emotional Granularity by Means of Latent Markov Factor Analysis

Emotional granularity (EG) is an individual's ability to describe their emotional experiences in a nuanced and specific way. In this paper, we propose that researchers adopt latent Markov factor analysis (LMFA) to investigate within-person variability in qualitative EG (i.e., variability in distinct granularity patterns between specific emotions across time). LMFA clusters measurement occasions into latent states according to state-specific measurement models. We argue that state-specific measurement models of repeatedly assessed emotion items can provide information about qualitative EG at a given point in time. Applying LMFA to the area of EG for negative and positive emotions separately by using data from an experience sampling study with 11,662 measurement occasions across 139 participants, we found three latent EG states for the negative emotions and three for the positive emotions. Momentary stress significantly predicted transitions between the EG states for both the negative and positive emotions. We further identified two and three latent classes of individuals who differed in state trajectories for negative and positive emotions, respectively. Neuroticism and dispositional mood regulation predicted latent class membership for negative (but not for positive) emotions. We conclude that LMFA may enrich EG research by enabling more fine-grained insights into variability in qualitative EG patterns.

Negative emotion differentiation in trauma-exposed community members: Associations with posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms in daily life

The ability to make fine-grained distinctions between discrete negative emotions-termed negative emotion differentiation (NED)-is important for emotion regulation and psychological well-being. Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is associated with elevated trauma-related negative emotions (e.g., fear, anger, guilt, shame) and self-reported difficulty identifying feelings, suggesting that low NED may be a feature of PTSD. PTSD is also characterized by overreliance on avoidance as an emotion regulation strategy-a characteristic that could be influenced by low NED. Here, we examined whether NED is reduced in PTSD and the role NED plays in the association between trauma-related avoidance and other PTSD symptoms (traumatic reexperiencing, negative alterations in cognition and mood, alterations in arousal and reactivity). Hypotheses were tested using 3 days of ecological momentary assessment (up to 17 prompts per day) in 80 trauma-exposed participants (39 with PTSD, 41 without PTSD; total completed surveys = 2,158). NED was reduced and self-reported difficulty identifying feelings was elevated in those with PTSD, and both predicted PTSD severity (Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale-5 score) and momentary PTSD symptoms. Furthermore, low NED, but not difficulty identifying feelings, predicted a stronger association between momentary trauma-related avoidance and PTSD symptoms. Results suggest that NED is involved in the emotional processing of trauma by decreasing the negative impact of avoidance behavior on other PTSD symptoms. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

A daily diary study on stressors, hurt feelings, aggression, and somatic symptoms: The role of rejection sensitivity and negative emotion differentiation

The current study adopted a daily diary design to examine associations of daily stressors and hurt feelings to three unfavorable daily outcomes, including verbal aggression, physical aggression, and somatic symptoms and the moderation of rejection sensitivity and negative emotion regulation on the relations between these daily variables. A total of 248 college students participated in the daily diary study in which they responded to the assessment on a daily basis for 7 consecutive days. The results indicated that daily stressors predicted daily verbal aggression; daily stressors, daily hurt feelings, and rejection sensitivity predicted somatic symptoms. Negative emotion regulation moderated the association between stressors and verbal aggression such that more stressors and high negative emotion regulation predicted more frequent daily verbal aggression. Rejection sensitivity moderated the association of hurt feelings to verbal and physical aggression. Perception of hurt feelings and high rejection sensitivity predicted more verbal aggression but less physical aggression. Rejection sensitivity also moderated the association of stressors to somatic symptoms such that more stressors and high rejection sensitivity predicted more somatic symptoms. The findings collectively highlight the importance of supporting individuals with high rejection sensitivity to encode social cues in a healthy way. It is imperative to provide emotion regulation skills to cope with negative emotions derived from social interactions.

Effects of chronic stress on smartphone addiction: A moderated mediation model

Introduction

Based on the compensatory Internet use theory and diathesis-stress model, the present study explores the effects of chronic stress on smartphone addiction (SPA). As intolerance of uncertainty and emotion-related variables are important factors that affect addictive behavior, we explore the mediating role of intolerance of uncertainty and the moderating role of emotion differentiation.

Methods

We conducted a questionnaire survey of 286 participants (13.64% female; M _age = 22.88; SD = 3.77; range = 17-39) on chronic stress, SPA, intolerance of uncertainty, and emotion differentiation. SPSS 28.0 was used to analyze the descriptive statistics and correlations and test the moderated mediation model.

Results

We find that (1) intolerance of uncertainty, SPA, and chronic stress are positively correlated with each other. Positive emotion differentiation is positively correlated with intolerance of uncertainty and negative emotion differentiation. (2) Intolerance of uncertainty plays a mediating role in chronic stress and SPA. (3) Positive emotion differentiation significantly moderates the relationship between chronic stress and SPA. Under the condition of low positive emotion differentiation, chronic stress is more effective in predicting SPA.

Discussion

These findings may contribute to intervention and prevention programs for SPA. Thus, the intervention and prevention of SPA can start from two directions-reduce the intolerance of uncertainty and enhance the ability to experience positive emotion differentiation.

Operationalizing undifferentiated affect: Validity and utility in clinical samples

Emotion differentiation is conceptualized as the process of categorizing one's general affective experiences into discrete emotions. The experience of undifferentiated affect or the inability to distinguish the particular emotion or combination of emotions that one is experiencing is often considered a hallmark of emotion dysregulation. Some past research has attempted to operationalize the general tendency to experience undifferentiated affect at the trait level using explicit questionnaire measures. More recently, indirect measures using intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) to estimate the consistency between simultaneous measures of different in-the-moment emotional experiences have become the favored method of quantifying undifferentiated affect. While the ICC method constitutes an advancement in estimating undifferentiated affect, which is theorized to be a dynamic process that occurs at a very granular level, prior investigations have used aggregate ICC measures or momentary ICC derivations that ignore multiple sources of dynamic variability to make inferences about in-the-moment experiences. We introduce a new, flexible method of calculating ICC measures of undifferentiated affect at different levels of experience that takes full advantage of time-intensive data measurement and more closely maps onto the theorized process. This method provides more refined estimates of undifferentiated affect and its associations with various behavioral outcomes, as well as uncovers more nuanced associations regarding the temporal process of emotional differentiation. It also elucidates potential conceptual issues in mapping empirical estimates of emotion undifferentiation onto their underlying theoretical interpretations.

The roles of negative emotion intensity, negative emotion differentiation, and self-compassion in loss of control eating

OBJECTIVE

Negative affect intensity is robustly related to binge eating, but the relationship between negative emotion differentiation (i.e., the ability to differentiate negatively-valenced emotions) and binge eating is unclear. Further, little is known about factors that might reduce emotion intensity and/or enhance emotion differentiation, thereby reducing binge eating. Self-compassion is consistently linked to less binge eating, which may be due to decreased negative affect and/or an enhanced ability to differentiate emotions. The current study examined the roles of negative emotion intensity, negative emotion differentiation, and self-compassion in binge eating using ecological momentary assessment.

METHOD

Participants were 201 university students (52.2% female) who completed questionnaires assessing affect seven times a day, and engagement in loss of control (LOC) eating episodes at the end of each day, for 10 days. The average of sadness, fear, guilt, and hostility subscales represented negative emotion intensity; intraclass correlations across negative affect subscales defined negative emotion differentiation. Both daily (i.e., within-person) and trait (i.e., between-person) emotion variables were examined as predictors.

RESULTS

Between-person negative emotion intensity, but not negative emotion differentiation, significantly predicted LOC eating occurrence. Self-compassion had a significant effect on LOC eating frequency, and this relationship was partially mediated via negative emotion intensity, but not via negative emotion differentiation.

DISCUSSION

Lower levels of negative emotion intensity partially account for the relationship between greater self-compassion and less frequent LOC eating. These findings highlight the importance of cultivating self-compassion to down-regulate negative emotions and to reduce LOC eating.

PUBLIC SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT

Our findings suggest that university students who approach their limitations compassionately experience fewer negative emotions in daily life and engage in less loss of control eating. Lower levels of negative affect partially explain this relationship between self-compassion and loss of control eating. These results highlight the importance of cultivating an understanding and a compassionate attitude toward oneself for reducing eating pathology.

Emotion differentiation in early recovery from alcohol use disorder: Associations with in-the-moment affect and 3-month drinking outcomes

Background

Early recovery from alcohol use disorder (AUD) is commonly associated with high levels of negative affect, stress, and emotional vulnerability, which confer significant relapse risk. Emotion differentiation—the ability to distinguish between discrete emotions—has been shown to predict relapse after treatment for a drug use disorder, but this relationship has not been explored in individuals recovering from AUD.

Methods

The current study used thrice daily random and up to thrice daily self‐initiated ecological momentary assessment surveys (N = 42, observations = 915) to examine whether 1) moments of high affective arousal are characterized by momentary differences in emotion differentiation among individuals in the first year of a current AUD recovery attempt, and 2) individuals’ average emotion differentiation would predict subsequent alcohol use measured by the timeline follow‐back over a 3‐month follow‐up period.

Results

Multilevel models showed that moments (Level 1) of higher‐than‐average negative affect (p < 0.001) and/or stress (p = 0.033) were characterized by less negative emotion differentiation, while moments of higher‐than‐average positive affect were characterized by greater positive emotion differentiation (p < 0.001). At the between‐person level (Level 2), participants with higher stress overall had lower negative emotion differentiation (p = 0.009). Linear regression showed that average negative, but not positive, emotion differentiation was inversely associated with percent drinking days over the subsequent 3‐month follow‐up period (p = 0.042). Neither form of average emotion differentiation was associated with drinking quantity.

Conclusions

We found that for individuals in early AUD recovery, affective states are associated with acute shifts in the capacity for emotion differentiation. Further, we found that average negative emotion differentiation prospectively predicts subsequent alcohol use.

Emotional Nuance: Examining Positive Emotional Granularity and Well-Being

The focus of this review is on positive emotional granularity. Emotional granularity is the level of specificity that characterizes verbal representations of an affective experience. Although there has been research on negative emotional granularity, relatively less attention has been given to the study of positive emotional granularity. Positive emotions are theorized to motivate an individual to “broaden and build” one’s scope of cognition, attention, and behavior. Distinct positive emotion concepts may provide individuals with more informational value than that provided by global mood. Indeed, individuals who are higher in positive emotional granularity report being better at coping with stressful experiences. In this review, we discuss growing research on positive emotional granularity and well-being. Issues of measurement, interventions, and considerations for future lines of research are discussed.

Feel to Heal: Negative Emotion Differentiation Promotes Medication Adherence in Multiple Sclerosis

Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is a debilitating chronic autoimmune disease of the central nervous system that results in lower quality of life. Medication adherence is important for reducing relapse, disease progression, and MS-related symptoms, particularly during the early stages of MS. However, adherence may be impacted by negative emotional states. Therefore, it is important to identify protective factors. Past research suggests that the ability to discriminate between negative emotional states, also known as negative emotion differentiation (NED), may be protective against enactment of maladaptive risk-related behaviors. However, less is known as to how NED may promote adaptive health behaviors such as medication adherence. Utilizing weekly diaries, we investigated whether NED moderates the association between negative affect and medication adherence rates across 58 weeks among patients (n = 27) newly diagnosed with MS (following McDonald criteria). Results revealed that NED significantly moderated the relationship between negative affect and medication adherence. Specifically, greater negative affect was associated with lower adherence only for individuals reporting low NED. However, this link disappeared for those reporting moderate to high NED. Building upon past research, our findings suggest that NED may promote adaptive health behaviors and have important clinical implications for the treatment and management of chronic illness.

From Knowledge to Differentiation: Increasing Emotion Knowledge Through an Intervention Increases Negative Emotion Differentiation

Labeling emotions with a high degree of granularity appears to be beneficial for well-being. However, there are individual differences in the level of emotion differentiation, and some individuals do not appear to differentiate much between different emotions. Low differentiation is associated with maladaptive outcomes, therefore such individuals might benefit from interventions that can increase their level of emotion differentiation. To this end, we tested the effects of an emotion knowledge intervention on the level of emotion differentiation. One hundred and twenty participants were assigned to either an experimental or a control condition. Emotion differentiation was assessed with a Scenario Rating Task before and after the intervention, and at follow-up. As predicted, negative emotion differentiation increased significantly after the emotion knowledge intervention, and this increase was not observed in the control group. Positive emotion differentiation also increased slightly; however, it did not reach significance level. This finding suggests that an emotion knowledge intervention might be beneficial for increasing negative emotion differentiation and may have implications for the clinical context.

Emotion Differentiation in Current and Remitted Major Depressive Disorder

People with current major depressive disorder (MDD) experience diminished emotion differentiation. We tested the hypothesis that this emotional disturbance is chronic and also characterizes those whose MDD has remitted. As our main aim, we examined emotion differentiation in conjunction with elevated negative and diminished positive emotional intensity, which are both cardinal symptoms of MDD. As an exploratory aim, we examined the predominant theoretical conceptualization that people low in emotion differentiation use more general state terms (e.g., bad) and fewer emotion terms (e.g., anger) to describe their emotional experience. Participants (assessed via diagnostic interview) included individuals who had current MDD (current depressed; n = 48), individuals whose MDD was in full remission (remitted depressed; n = 80), and healthy controls (n = 87). Participants also completed two self-report measures of depressive symptoms and reported momentary emotion repeatedly for 14 days via experience sampling, from which we computed emotion differentiation (i.e., intraclass correlation coefficient) and emotional intensity (i.e., average of the mean emotion ratings across surveys). Finally, participants described a momentary emotional experience via an open-response format, which was coded for the use of general state and emotion terms. Compared to the healthy control group, the current and remitted depressed groups showed similarly low levels of negative and positive emotion differentiation. These findings suggest that diminished emotion differentiation may be a stable characteristic of depressive disorders and a possible target for future prevention efforts. Diminished negative emotion differentiation was significantly associated with higher depressive symptoms as assessed by only one of the depression measures, though this finding did not hold after adjusting for negative emotional intensity. Finally, participants’ emotion differentiation was not associated with use of general state and emotion terms, and groups did not use general state and emotion terms in ways that were consistent with the predominant theoretical conceptualization of emotion differentiation, suggesting the need for clarification in this research domain.

Emotion Differentiation and Youth Mental Health: Current Understanding and Open Questions

A growing body of research identifies emotion differentiation-the ability to specifically identify one's emotions-as a key skill for well-being. High emotion differentiation is associated with healthier and more effective regulation of one's emotions, and low emotion differentiation has been documented in several forms of psychopathology. However, the lion's share of this research has focused on adult samples, even though approximately 50% of mental disorders onset before age 18. This review curates what we know about the development of emotion differentiation and its implications for youth mental health. I first review published studies investigating how emotion differentiation develops across childhood and adolescence, as well as studies testing relations between emotion differentiation and mental health in youth samples. Emerging evidence suggests that emotion differentiation actually falls across childhood and adolescence, a counterintuitive pattern that merits further investigation. Additionally, several studies find relations between emotion differentiation and youth mental health, but some instability in results emerged. I then identify open questions that limit our current understanding of emotion differentiation, including (i) lack of clarity as to the valid measurement of emotion differentiation, (ii) potential third variables that could explain relations between emotion differentiation and mental-health (e.g., mean negative affect, IQ, personality, and circularity with outcomes), and (iii) lack of clear mechanistic models regarding the development of emotion differentiation and how it facilitates well-being. I conclude with a discussion of future directions that can address open questions and work toward interventions that treat (or even prevent) psychopathology.

Negative Emotion Differentiation Predicts Psychotherapy Outcome: Preliminary Findings

Emotion differentiation (ED), the extent to which same-valenced emotions are experienced as distinct, is considered a valuable ability in various contexts owing to the essential affect-related information it provides. This information can help individuals understand and regulate their emotional and motivational states. In this study, we sought to examine the extent to which ED can be beneficial in psychotherapy context and specifically for predicting treatment response. Thirty-two prospective patients with mood and anxiety disorders completed four daily assessments of negative and positive emotions for 30 days before receiving cognitive-behavioral treatment. Depression, stress, and anxiety symptoms severity were assessed pre- and post-treatment using self-reports and clinical interviews. We conducted a series of hierarchical regression models in which symptoms change scores were predicted by ED while adjusting for the mean and variability. We found that negative ED was associated with greater self-reported treatment response (except for anxiety) when negative emotional variability (EV) was included in the models. Probing negative ED and EV's interactive effects suggested that negative ED was associated with greater treatment response (except for anxiety) for individuals with lower EV levels. Results were obtained while controlling for mean negative affect. Our findings suggest that negative ED can benefit psychotherapy patients whose negative emotions are relatively less variable. We discuss the meaning of suppression and interactive effects between affect dynamics and consider possible clinical implications.

Emotional Granularity Increases With Intensive Ambulatory Assessment: Methodological and Individual Factors Influence How Much

Individuals differ in their ability to create instances of emotion that are precise and context-specific. This skill - referred to as emotional granularity or emotion differentiation - is associated with positive mental health outcomes. To date, however, little work has examined whether and how emotional granularity might be increased. Emotional granularity is typically measured using data from experience sampling studies, in which participants are prompted to report on their emotional experiences multiple times per day, across multiple days. This measurement approach allows researchers to examine patterns of responses over time using real-world events. Recent work suggests that experience sampling itself may facilitate increases in emotional granularity in depressed individuals, such that it may serve both empirical and interventional functions. We replicated and extended these findings in healthy adults, using data from an intensive ambulatory assessment study including experience sampling, peripheral physiological monitoring, and end-of-day diaries. We also identified factors that might distinguish individuals who showed larger increases over the course of experience sampling and examined the extent of the impact of these factors. We found that increases in emotional granularity over time were facilitated by methodological factors, such as number of experience sampling prompts responded to per day, as well as individual factors, such as resting respiratory sinus arrhythmia. These results provide support for the use of experience sampling methods to improve emotional granularity, raise questions about the boundary conditions of this effect, and have implications for the conceptualization of emotional granularity and its relationship with emotional health.

Is Negative Emotion Differentiation Associated With Emotion Regulation Choice? Investigations at the Person and Day Level

Negative emotion differentiation (ED) has been suggested to be important for adaptive emotion regulation (ER). However, knowledge concerning how ED may impact specific ER strategy choice remains surprisingly sparse. We therefore investigated (1) if person-level negative ED was associated with habitual use of individual ER strategies, (2) how person-level negative ED was associated with daily use of individual ER strategies, and finally (3) how within-person daily fluctuations in negative ED were associated with daily use of individual ER strategies. During a 10-day experience sampling study, 90 healthy participants rated their momentary emotions and their ER efforts in response to those emotions. ER strategies included four putatively adaptive strategies (reflection, distancing, non-reactivity, reappraisal) and four putatively maladaptive strategies (rumination, experiential avoidance, expressive suppression, worry). Results revealed that negative ED at the person level was neither associated with habitual nor daily ER strategy endorsement when controlling for negative emotions. Likewise, associations between within-individual daily variation in negative ED and daily ER did not remain statistically significant after controlling for negative emotions. The results thus point to no or weak associations between negative ED and ER choice above and beyond negative emotions. Future experimental studies addressing ED at the momentary level and teasing out the ED-ER causal timeline are needed to further evaluate ED-ER associations. Findings from such research may represent an important step toward refining psychotherapeutic interventions aimed at improving emotional problems.

The impact of emotion regulation therapy on emotion differentiation in psychologically distressed caregivers of cancer patients

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES

Emotion differentiation is considered adaptive because differentiated emotional experiences are believed to promote access to the information that emotions carry, enabling context-appropriate emotion regulation. In the present study, secondary analyses from a recent randomized controlled trial (O'Toole et al., 2019) were conducted to investigate whether emotion differentiation can improve as a result of psychotherapy and whether improvements in emotion differentiation are associated with reduced distress.

DESIGN AND METHODS

A total of 81 distressed caregivers of cancer patients were randomized to Emotion Regulation Therapy (ERT), an intervention aimed at improving emotion differentiation and facilitating healthy emotion regulation, or a waitlist condition. Emotion differentiation scores could be calculated for 54 caregivers.

RESULTS

Repeated measures ANOVAs revealed that ERT led to significant improvements in negative (η² = 0.21, p = .012), but not positive emotion differentiation (η² = <0.01, p = .973). Correlation analyses showed that improvements in negative emotion differentiation were not associated with changes in distress.

CONCLUSIONS

The results suggest that negative emotion differentiation can improve as a result of psychotherapy. Further research is needed to clarify how improvements in emotion differentiation following therapeutic interventions relate to treatment outcomes such as distress.Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT02322905.

High emotion differentiation buffers against internalizing symptoms following exposure to stressful life events in adolescence: An intensive longitudinal study

Exposure to stressful life events is strongly associated with internalizing psychopathology, and identifying factors that reduce vulnerability to stress-related internalizing problems is critical for development of early interventions. Drawing on research from affective science, we tested whether high emotion differentiation-the ability to specifically identify one's feelings-buffers adolescents from developing internalizing symptoms when exposed to stress. Thirty adolescents completed a laboratory measure of emotion differentiation before an intensive year-long longitudinal study in which exposure to stress and internalizing problems were assessed at both the moment-level (n=4,921 experience sampling assessments) and monthly-level (n=355 monthly assessments). High negative and positive emotion differentiation attenuated moment-level coupling between perceived stress and feelings of depression, and high negative emotion differentiation eliminated monthly-level associations between stressful life events and anxiety symptoms. These results suggest that high emotion differentiation buffers adolescents against anxiety and depression in the face of stress, perhaps by facilitating adaptive emotion regulation.

Measuring Negative Emotion Differentiation Via Coded Descriptions of Emotional Experience

Emotion differentiation (ED) has been defined in terms of two abilities: (a) making fine-grained distinctions between emotional experiences, and (b) describing individual emotional experiences with a high degree of nuance and specificity. Research to date has almost exclusively focused on the former, with little attention paid to the latter. The current study sought to address this discrepant focus by testing two novel measures of negative ED (i.e., based on negatively valenced emotions only) via coded open-ended descriptions of individual emotional experiences, both past and present. As part of a larger study, 307 participants completed written descriptions of two negative emotional experiences, as well as a measure of emotion regulation difficulties and indices of psychopathological symptom severity. Negative ED ability, as measured via consistency between emotional experiences, was found to be unrelated to negative ED ability exhibited via coding of language within experiences. Within-experience negative ED may offer an incrementally adaptive function to that of ED between emotional experiences. Implications for ED theory are discussed.

Investigating the relationship between emotional granularity and cardiorespiratory physiological activity in daily life

Emotional granularity describes the ability to create emotional experiences that are precise and context-specific. Despite growing evidence of a link between emotional granularity and mental health, the physiological correlates of granularity have been under-investigated. This study explored the relationship between granularity and cardiorespiratory physiological activity in everyday life, with particular reference to the role of respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), an estimate of vagal influence on the heart often associated with positive mental and physical health outcomes. Participants completed a physiologically triggered experience-sampling protocol including ambulatory recording of electrocardiogram, impedance cardiogram, movement, and posture. At each prompt, participants generated emotion labels to describe their current experience. In an end-of-day survey, participants elaborated on each prompt by rating the intensity of their experience on a standard set of emotion adjectives. Consistent with our hypotheses, individuals with higher granularity exhibited a larger number of distinct patterns of physiological activity during seated rest, and more situationally precise patterns of activity during emotional events: granularity was positively correlated with the number of clusters of cardiorespiratory physiological activity discovered in seated rest data, as well as with the performance of classifiers trained on event-related changes in physiological activity. Granularity was also positively associated with RSA during seated rest periods, although this relationship did not reach significance in this sample. These findings are consistent with constructionist accounts of emotion that propose concepts as a key mechanism underlying individual differences in emotional experience, physiological regulation, and physical health.

Developing a non-verbal, self-report assessment tool of action tendencies: The Depicted Action Tendencies (DAT) instrument

The objectives of this series of studies were to develop and evaluate a visual self-report measure, the Depicted Action Tendencies (DAT), for the assessment of action tendencies, and to examine relations between action tendencies and emotions. In three independent studies, 938 participants evaluated drawings depicting individuals engaged in actions, reflecting four classes of action tendencies; the tendency to approach reward, approach threat, avoid threat, and avoid reward. The DAT instrument showed specificity in terms of associations with emotions and verbal action-tendency items with minimal overlap between drawings (Study 1). The specificity of the drawings extended to settings in which participants recalled events from their lives (Study 2 and 3). The findings suggest that the drawings can capture different action tendencies in contexts labeled with the same emotion and provide initial support for the DAT instrument as a valid and reliable measure of action tendencies. We believe the DAT instrument offers potential value both in experimental and clinical settings. Given its pictorial format, the DAT is easy to comprehend and may represent a valuable instrument for assessing action tendencies in a quick manner at the momentary level. It may also be useful to individuals with limited linguistic skills or difficulties in verbalizing sensations and feelings.

Momentary Emotion Differentiation: The Derivation and Validation of an index to Study Within-Person Fluctuations in Emotion Differentiation

Emotion differentiation refers to the tendency to label emotions in a granular way. While differentiation is an important individual difference in the context of psychological well-being, it is unknown how it fluctuates within individuals. Such a within-person measure is important, since it would allow the study of how changes in differentiation predict subsequent levels of other variables of interest. Here, we present a framework to study emotion differentiation at the within-person level by introducing a momentary emotion differentiation index. This index is directly derived from the classical emotion differentiation index, the intraclass correlation. We first give a theoretical derivation of this index. Next, using data from two experience sampling studies, we show how this new momentary index is related to other momentary indicators of well-being, and take the first steps in building its nomological network. A better understanding of within-person fluctuations in emotion differentiation will allow us to identify the causes and consequences of these fluctuations, and search for ways to teach individuals to increase their level of emotion differentiation.

Development of a Novel Method of Emotion Differentiation That Uses Open-Ended Descriptions of Momentary Affective States

Emotion differentiation (ED) has been conceptualized as a trait that facilitates emotion regulation and increases well-being. Yet basic questions remain unanswered about how best to assess it and whether favorable outcomes can be observed only during times of stress. The goal of the present research was to develop a novel behavioral (specificity) index of ED. We conducted two daily diary studies (N = 111-190) in which we included different measures of ED, well-being, and emotion regulation. The different ED measures were largely unrelated to each other. In both studies, the specificity index of ED showed a positive association with daily well-being, but in Study 2, this association held only on days with a negative event. Results regarding ED and the use of emotion-regulation strategies were inconsistent across strategies and studies. Possible reasons for these mixed results (e.g., sample selection, context sensitivity of regulation strategies) are discussed.

Individual Differences in Negative Emotion Differentiation Predict Resting-State Spontaneous Emotional Regulatory Processes

Negative emotion differentiation facilitates emotion regulation. However, whether individual differences in negative emotion differentiation is associated with resting-state spontaneous emotion regulation remains unclear. This study aimed to explore the effect of individual differences in negative emotion differentiation on spontaneous emotional regulatory processes as indexed by resting electroencephalogram (EEG) indicators (e.g., frontal alpha asymmetry and theta/beta ratio). Participants (n = 40, M_age = 21.74 years, 62% women) completed a negative emotion differentiation task. Afterward, 4 min of resting EEG data were recorded. Multiple regression results showed that negative emotion differentiation significantly predicted the alpha asymmetry at electrode pairs (F4–F3 and FP2–FP1) and the theta/beta ratio at the F3 and FZ electrode sites. Individuals with high negative emotion differentiation presented more left-lateralized activations and a lower theta/beta ratio. Taken together, these results suggest that individuals with high negative emotion differentiation show enhanced spontaneous emotional regulatory functioning. Thus, we provided the first resting-state neural evidence on emotion differentiation of spontaneous emotional regulatory functioning.

Emotion differentiation moderates the effects of rumination on depression: A longitudinal study

Elevated trait rumination is associated with and predicts onset of major depressive disorder, but not all people with elevated trait rumination develop major depressive disorder. We hypothesize that certain emotional processes weaken the rumination-depression link, protecting against increases in depression. In this prospective longitudinal study, we examined one such process, emotion differentiation-the ability to discern specific emotions. Because higher negative emotion differentiation (NED) facilitates down-regulating negative emotions and the content of rumination tends to be negative, we predicted that NED, but not positive emotion differentiation (PED), would moderate the rumination-depression association, such that rumination would only predict increases in depression when negative emotions are less, not more, differentiated. Over 1 week of experience sampling, 65 community-dwelling adults (M = 38.4 years) repeatedly reported their emotions, from which we computed NED and PED. Participants completed self-report measures of rumination and depression at baseline and a measure of depression 6 months later. Regression analyses suggested that the combination of NED and PED, but not a unique contribution of either NED or PED, interacted with rumination to predict significant changes in depression, after controlling for mean emotion. Specifically, rumination predicted significant increases in depression when emotion differentiation was lower, but not higher. Findings demonstrate longitudinal benefits of emotion differentiation in adults and suggest emotion differentiation as a promising avenue for studying major depressive disorder. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Low emotion differentiation: An affective correlate of binge eating?

BACKGROUND

Low emotion differentiation (the tendency to experience vague affective states rather than discrete emotions) is associated with psychopathology marked by emotion regulation deficits and impulsive/maladaptive behavior. However, research examining associations between emotion differentiation and dysregulated eating is nascent and has yet to incorporate measures of clinically significant binge eating. Different measures of emotion differentiation have also been used, impeding cross-study comparisons. We therefore examined associations between several emotion differentiation measures and binge eating-related phenotypes across a spectrum of severity.

METHODS

Women (N = 482) from the Michigan State University Twin Registry completed the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) daily for 45 consecutive days. Three measures of negative/positive emotion differentiation (NED/PED) were created using the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), average interitem correlation, and average daily variance between negative/positive emotion ratings on the PANAS. Associations between NED/PED measures and emotional eating (EE) and a history of binge eating episodes (BEs) were then examined, controlling for affect intensity and BMI.

RESULTS

Lower PED was associated with greater odds of BEs across the ICC and average interitem correlation measures, and more EE on the daily variance measure. Findings involving NED were less consistent; lower NED was associated with greater EE and greater odds of BEs using the daily variance measure only.

CONCLUSION

Low PED is associated with clinically significant binge eating, and some aspects of NED may also be relevant for binge eating-related phenotypes. Further research examining the constructs captured by different emotion differentiation measures and their relevance to binge eating is needed.

Emotion Differentiation as a Protective Factor Against the Behavioral Consequences of Rumination: A Conceptual Replication and Extension in the Context of Social Anxiety

Rumination is thought to play a central role in affective disorders such as social anxiety disorder (SAD). Past research indicates that rumination tends to exacerbate negative emotions and increase the risk of engaging in maladaptive coping behaviors (e.g., avoiding social activities). However, little is known on how to effectively protect against the negative outcomes of rumination. Previously, Zaki, Coifman, Rafaeli, Berenson, and Downey (2013) found that negative emotion differentiation (NED) protected against rumination and nonsuicidal self-injury in borderline personality disorder. Nevertheless, it is unclear whether this protective effect would extend to other populations and behaviors. Therefore, the present investigation sought to replicate and extend Zaki et al.'s (2013) findings in the context of SAD. In two studies, we examined if NED would moderate the positive association between rumination and frequency of social avoidance. Study 1 involved 29 individuals who met criteria for SAD with or without co-occurring major depressive episode, while Study 2 involved a nonclinical sample of 190 college students. All participants completed a measure of rumination and an experience-sampling diary which provided indices of NED and social avoidance. The results from both studies were unanimous: NED significantly moderated the relationship between rumination and social avoidance such that the positive association between rumination and social avoidance was significant for low but not moderate to high NED. Overall, the findings provide a conceptual replication of Zaki et al. (2013) and further evidence for the protective effects of NED against the maladaptive behavioral consequences of rumination across populations.

Different Aspects of Emotional Awareness in Relation to Motor Cognition and Autism Traits

Emotion is inherently embodied, formulated through bodily sensation, as well as expressed and regulated through action. Both expressing one’s own emotions and understanding the emotional actions of others are common areas of difficulty in autism. Moreover, reduced emotional awareness is also thought to be problematic in autism, and such difficulties may be mediated by impaired motor cognition. We aimed to examine how intensity of emotional experience and ability to differentiate between one’s own emotions relates to motor empathy and autistic traits. We hypothesized that greater motor cognition would be associated with greater emotional intensity and more refined emotion differentiation. Participants from the general population (N = 160) completed the Actions and Feelings Questionnaire (AFQ), a self-report measure assessing motor cognition, alongside the Broad Autism Phenotype Questionnaire and an emotion elicitation task. Motor cognition was significantly associated with more intense emotional experiences but not with ability to differentiate between similar emotions. Autistic traits, particularly social aloofness, predicted less emotion differentiation and lower scores on the animation subscale of the AFQ. We suggest that whereas as intensity of experience may be dependent on sensorimotor representation of emotions, differentiation requires additional cognitive functions such as language understanding. A dissociation between awareness of intensity and differentiation may be critical for understanding emotional difficulties in autism.

Differentiate to Regulate: Low Negative Emotion Differentiation Is Associated With Ineffective Use but Not Selection of Emotion-Regulation Strategies

Emotion differentiation, which involves experiencing and labeling emotions in a granular way, has been linked with well-being. It has been theorized that differentiating between emotions facilitates effective emotion regulation, but this link has yet to be comprehensively tested. In two experience-sampling studies, we examined how negative emotion differentiation was related to (a) the selection of emotion-regulation strategies and (b) the effectiveness of these strategies in downregulating negative emotion (Ns = 200 and 101 participants and 34,660 and 6,282 measurements, respectively). Unexpectedly, we found few relationships between differentiation and the selection of putatively adaptive or maladaptive strategies. Instead, we found interactions between differentiation and strategies in predicting negative emotion. Among low differentiators, all strategies (Study 1) and four of six strategies (Study 2) were more strongly associated with increased negative emotion than they were among high differentiators. This suggests that low differentiation may hinder successful emotion regulation, which in turn supports the idea that effective regulation may underlie differentiation benefits.

Depressive symptoms and deficits in stress-reactive negative, positive, and within-emotion-category differentiation: A daily diary study

OBJECTIVE

The present research aimed to better understand deficits in emotion differentiation that accompany depressive symptoms. Depressive symptoms have been associated with more undifferentiated negative emotion experiences-experiencing multiple negative emotions simultaneously. We extend previous research by asking: (a) Are depressive symptoms and negative and positive emotion differentiation related above and beyond emotion intensity? (b) Are deficits in negative emotion differentiation specific to distinct categories of negative emotions (sadness, guilt, anger, and anxiety)? and (c) Do age or gender predict emotion differentiation or its associations with depressive symptoms?

METHOD

In 220 community participants (59% female; 21-60 years), we assessed depressive symptoms using surveys and emotion differentiation using daily diary emotion ratings in response to daily stressful events.

RESULTS

Greater depressive symptoms were associated with lower negative, but not positive, emotion differentiation, above and beyond emotion intensity. Depressive symptoms were specifically related to lower differentiation among sadness-related emotions, and this sadness-specific deficit accounted for the deficit in negative emotion differentiation. Age and gender did not predict or moderate associations with emotion differentiation.

CONCLUSION

Depressive symptoms are associated with undifferentiated negative emotions above and beyond emotion intensity, and this association appears to be driven by undifferentiated sadness-related emotions, across gender and age.

The Nonlinear Development of Emotion Differentiation: Granular Emotional Experience Is Low in Adolescence

People differ in how specifically they separate affective experiences into different emotion types-a skill called emotion differentiation or emotional granularity. Although increased emotion differentiation has been associated with positive mental health outcomes, little is known about its development. Participants ( N = 143) between the ages of 5 and 25 years completed a laboratory measure of negative emotion differentiation in which they rated how much a series of aversive images made them feel angry, disgusted, sad, scared, and upset. Emotion-differentiation scores were computed using intraclass correlations. Emotion differentiation followed a nonlinear developmental trajectory: It fell from childhood to adolescence and rose from adolescence to adulthood. Mediation analyses suggested that an increased tendency to report feeling emotions one at a time explained elevated emotion differentiation in childhood. Importantly, two other mediators (intensity of emotional experiences and scale use) did not explain this developmental trend. Hence, low emotion differentiation in adolescence may arise because adolescents have little experience conceptualizing co-occurring emotions.

Cognitive fusion and emotion differentiation: does getting entangled with our thoughts dysregulate the generation, experience and regulation of emotion?

We tested whether cognitive fusion impairs emotion differentiation and thereby mediates relations between cognitive fusion and depression and panic symptoms among 55 adults (M_age = 26.8 (3.9), 50.9% women). Using visual stimuli, we elicited multiple emotion states and measured (a) emotional intensity - the subjective emotion intensity of elicited emotions (i.e. Specific Emotion Intensity - SEI), as well as (b) emotional differentiation - the degree of co-activation of multiple negative emotions when a specific emotion was elicited (i.e. Multiple Emotion Co-Activation - MECA). First, as hypothesised, we found that cognitive fusion predicted lower levels of emotion differentiation (MECA). In contrast, as hypothesised, these effects were significantly greater than the (null) effects of cognitive fusion on emotion intensity (SEI). Second, as predicted, MECA, but not SEI, predicted depression and panic symptoms. Finally, we found that MECA mediated the effects of cognitive fusion on depression and panic symptoms. The present findings contribute novel, preliminary empirical insight into associations between cognitive fusion, impaired emotion differentiation and mental ill-health.

Sources of variation in emotional awareness: Age, gender, and socioeconomic status

The present study examined associations between emotional awareness facets (type clarity, source clarity, negative emotion differentiation, voluntary attention, involuntary attention) and sociodemographic characteristics (age, gender, and socioeconomic status (SES)) in a large US sample (N = 919). Path analyses-controlling for variance shared between sociodemographic variables and allowing emotional awareness facets to correlate-demonstrated that (a) age was positively associated with type clarity and source clarity, and inversely associated with involuntary attention; (b) gender was associated with all facets but type clarity, with higher source clarity, negative emotion differentiation, voluntary attention, and involuntary attention reported by women then men; and (c) SES was positively associated with type clarity with a very small effect. These findings extend our understanding of emotional awareness and identify future directions for research to elucidate the causes and consequences of individual differences in emotional awareness.

Undifferentiated negative affect and impulsivity in borderline personality and depressive disorders: A momentary perspective

Individuals with borderline personality disorder (BPD) often report experiencing several negative emotions simultaneously, an indicator of "undifferentiated" negative affect. The current study examined the relationship between undifferentiated negative affect and impulsivity. Participants with a current BPD (n = 67) or depressive disorder (DD; n = 38) diagnosis carried an electronic diary for 28 days, reporting on emotions and impulsivity when randomly prompted (up to 6 times per day). Undifferentiated negative affect was quantified using momentary intraclass correlation coefficients, which indicated how consistently negative emotion items were rated across fear, hostility, and sadness subscales. Undifferentiated negative affect at the occasion-level, day-level, and across 28 days was used to predict occasion-level impulsivity. Multilevel modeling was used to test the hypothesis that undifferentiated negative emotion would be a significant predictor of momentary impulsivity above and beyond levels of overall negative affect. Undifferentiated negative affect at the occasion and day levels were significant predictors of occasion-level impulsivity, but undifferentiated negative affect across the 28-day study period was only marginally significant. Results did not differ depending on BPD or DD status, though individuals with BPD did report significantly greater momentary impulsivity and undifferentiated negative affect. Undifferentiated negative affect may increase risk for impulsivity among individuals with BPD and depressive disorders, and the current data suggest that this process can be relatively immediate as well as cumulative over the course of a day. This research supports the consideration of undifferentiated negative affect as a transdiagnostic construct, but one that may be particularly relevant for those with BPD.

Stress sensitivity and stress generation in social anxiety disorder: a temporal process approach

Dominant theoretical models of social anxiety disorder (SAD) suggest that people who suffer from function-impairing social fears are likely to react more strongly to social stressors. Researchers have examined the reactivity of people with SAD to stressful laboratory tasks, but there is little knowledge about how stress affects their daily lives. We asked 79 adults from the community, 40 diagnosed with SAD and 39 matched healthy controls, to self-monitor their social interactions, social events, and emotional experiences over 2 weeks using electronic diaries. These data allowed us to examine associations of social events and emotional well-being both within-day and from one day to the next. Using hierarchical linear modeling, we found all participants to report increases in negative affect and decreases in positive affect and self-esteem on days when they experienced more stressful social events. However, people with SAD displayed greater stress sensitivity, particularly in negative emotion reactions to stressful social events, compared to healthy controls. Groups also differed in how previous days' events influenced sensitivity to current days' events. Moreover, we found evidence of stress generation in that the SAD group reported more frequent interpersonal stress, though temporal analyses did not suggest greater likelihood of social stress on days following intense negative emotions. Our findings support the role of heightened social stress sensitivity in SAD, highlighting rigidity in reactions and occurrence of stressful experiences from one day to the next. These findings also shed light on theoretical models of emotions and self-esteem in SAD and present important clinical implications.