Sleep Efficiency and Naturalistically-Observed Social Behavior Following Marital Separation: The Critical Role of Contact with an Ex-partner.

Marital disruption is associated with increased risk for a range of poor health outcomes, including disturbed sleep. This report examines trajectories of actigraphy-assessed sleep efficiency following marital separation as well as the extent to which daily social behaviors and individual differences in attachment explain variability in these trajectories over time. One hundred twenty-two recently-separated adults (N = 122) were followed longitudinally for three assessment periods over five months. To objectively assess daily social behaviors and sleep efficiency, participants wore the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR) during the day (for one weekend at each assessment period) and an actiwatch at night (for seven days at each assessment period). Greater time spent with an ex-partner, as assessed by the EAR, was associated with decreased sleep efficiency between participants (p = .003). Higher attachment anxiety was also associated with decreased sleep efficiency (p = .03), as was the EAR-observed measure of "television on." The latter effect operated both between (p = .004) and within participants (p = .005). Finally, study timepoint moderated the association between EAR-observed measure of "television on" and sleep efficiency (p = .007). The current findings deepen our understanding of sleep disturbances following marital separation and point to contact with an ex-partner and time spent with the television on as behavioral markers of risk.

Contact with an Ex-partner is Associated with Psychological Distress after Marital Separation.

This study examined the association between naturalistically-observed in-person contact with one's ex-partner and separation-related psychological distress (SRPD). 122 recently-separated adults were assessed using the Electronically Activated Recorder (Mehl, 2017) on three occasions across five months. The association between in-person contact with one's ex-partner, as a between-person variable, and concurrent SRPD was not reliably different from zero, nor was the time-varying effect of in-person contact. However, more frequent in-person contact with one's ex-partner predicted higher SRPD two months later, above and beyond the variance accounted for by concurrent in-person contact, demographic, relationship, and attachment factors. Follow-up analyses yielded that this effect was only present for people without children; a one standard deviation increase in in-person contact offset and slowed the predicted decline in SRPD over two months by 112%. Our discussion emphasizes new ways to think about the role of in-person contact in shaping adults' psychological adjustment to separation over time.

Best practices for Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR) research: A practical guide to coding and processing EAR data.

Since its introduction in 2001, the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR) method has become an established and broadly used tool for the naturalistic observation of daily social behavior in clinical, health, personality, and social science research. Previous treatments of the method have focused primarily on its measurement approach (relative to other ecological assessment methods), research design considerations (e.g., sampling schemes, privacy considerations), and the properties of its data (i.e., reliability, validity, and added measurement value). However, the evolved procedures and practices related to arguably one of the most critical parts of EAR research-the coding process that converts the sampled raw ambient sounds into quantitative behavioral data for statistical analysis-so far have largely been communicated informally between EAR researchers. This article documents "best practices" for processing EAR data, which have been tested and refined in our research over the years. Our aim is to provide practical information on important topics such as the development of a coding system, the training and supervision of EAR coders, EAR data preparation and database optimization, the troubleshooting of common coding challenges, and coding considerations specific to diverse populations.

Depression, negative emotionality, and self-referential language: A multi-lab, multi-measure, and multi-language-task research synthesis.

Depressive symptomatology is manifested in greater first-person singular pronoun use (i.e., I-talk), but when and for whom this effect is most apparent, and the extent to which it is specific to depression or part of a broader association between negative emotionality and I-talk, remains unclear. Using pooled data from N = 4,754 participants from 6 labs across 2 countries, we examined, in a preregistered analysis, how the depression-I-talk effect varied by (a) first-person singular pronoun type (i.e., subjective, objective, and possessive), (b) the communication context in which language was generated (i.e., personal, momentary thought, identity-related, and impersonal), and (c) gender. Overall, there was a small but reliable positive correlation between depression and I-talk (r = .10, 95% CI [.07, .13]). The effect was present for all first-person singular pronouns except the possessive type, in all communication contexts except the impersonal one, and for both females and males with little evidence of gender differences. Importantly, a similar pattern of results emerged for negative emotionality. Further, the depression-I-talk effect was substantially reduced when controlled for negative emotionality but this was not the case when the negative emotionality-I-talk effect was controlled for depression. These results suggest that the robust empirical link between depression and I-talk largely reflects a broader association between negative emotionality and I-talk. Self-referential language using first-person singular pronouns may therefore be better construed as a linguistic marker of general distress proneness or negative emotionality rather than as a specific marker of depression. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Dispositional mindfulness in daily life: A naturalistic observation study.

Mindfulness has seen an extraordinary rise as a scientific construct, yet surprisingly little is known about how it manifests behaviorally in daily life. The present study identifies assumptions regarding how mindfulness relates to behavior and contrasts them against actual behavioral manifestations of trait mindfulness in daily life. Study 1 (N = 427) shows that mindfulness is assumed to relate to emotional positivity, quality social interactions, prosocial orientation and attention to sensory perceptions. In Study 2, 185 participants completed a gold-standard, self-reported mindfulness measure (the FFMQ) and underwent naturalistic observation sampling to assess their daily behaviors. Trait mindfulness was robustly related to a heightened perceptual focus in conversations. However, it was not related to behavioral and speech markers of emotional positivity, quality social interactions, or prosocial orientation. These findings suggest that the subjective and self-reported experience of being mindful in daily life is expressed primarily through sharpened perceptual attention, rather than through other behavioral or social differences. This highlights the need for ecological models of how dispositional mindfulness "works" in daily life, and raises questions about the measurement of mindfulness.

"Eavesdropping on Happiness" Revisited: A Pooled, Multisample Replication of the Association Between Life Satisfaction and Observed Daily Conversation Quantity and Quality.

In the present study, we aimed to replicate and extend findings by Mehl, Vazire, Holleran, and Clark (2010) that individuals with higher well-being tend to spend less time alone and more time interacting with others (e.g., greater conversation quantity) and engage in less small talk and more substantive conversations (e.g., greater conversation quality). To test the robustness of these effects in a larger and more diverse sample, we used Bayesian integrative data analysis to pool data on subjective life satisfaction and observed daily conversations from three heterogeneous adult samples, in addition to the original sample ( N = 486). We found moderate associations between life satisfaction and amount of alone time, conversation time, and substantive conversations, but no reliable association with small talk. Personality did not substantially moderate these associations. The failure to replicate the original small-talk effect is theoretically and practically important, as it has garnered considerable scientific and lay interest.

Objectively Measured Social Integration Is Associated With an Immune Risk Phenotype Following Marital Separation.

Background: Close relationships play an integral role in human development, and robust evidence links marital separation and divorce to poor health outcomes. Social integration may play a key role in this association. In many ways, the study of marital separation and divorce provides an ideal model system for a more complete understanding of the association between life stress and physical health. Purpose: The current study investigated associations among objectively measured social integration, psychological distress, and biomarkers of immune health in recently separated adults (N = 49). Methods: We collected four measures of immune functioning-interleukin-6, C-reactive protein, and antibody titers to latent cytomegalovirus and Epstein-Barr virus-that were combined to yield a viral-Immune Risk Profile. To assess how variability in social integration is associated with immunological correlates following the end of a marriage, we incorporated observational ecological momentary assessment data using a novel methodology (the Electronically Activated Recorder). Results: We found that objectively measured social behaviors are associated with concurrent viral-Immune Risk Profile scores over and above the effects of psychological distress and that psychological distress may be linked to biomarkers of immune health through social integration. Conclusions: This research expands current knowledge of biomarkers of immune health after divorce and separation and includes a new methodology for objective measures of social engagement.

Neural Reactivity to Emotional Faces May Mediate the Relationship Between Childhood Empathy and Adolescent Prosocial Behavior.

Reactivity to others' emotions not only can result in empathic concern (EC), an important motivator of prosocial behavior, but can also result in personal distress (PD), which may hinder prosocial behavior. Examining neural substrates of emotional reactivity may elucidate how EC and PD differentially influence prosocial behavior. Participants (N = 57) provided measures of EC, PD, prosocial behavior, and neural responses to emotional expressions at ages 10 and 13. Initial EC predicted subsequent prosocial behavior. Initial EC and PD predicted subsequent reactivity to emotions in the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and inferior parietal lobule, respectively. Activity in the IFG, a region linked to mirror neuron processes, as well as cognitive control and language, mediated the relation between initial EC and subsequent prosocial behavior.

Social responses to expressive suppression: The role of personality judgments.

Why do people who suppress their emotion-expressive behavior have difficulty forming close, supportive relationships? Previous studies have found that suppression disrupts the dynamics of social interactions and existing relationships. We evaluated a complementary hypothesis: that suppression functions as a behavioral cue leading others to form negative personality impressions of suppressors, even at zero-acquaintance. In 2 studies, participants reported personality judgments and other impressions of targets who either suppressed or expressed their emotion-expressive behavior in response to amusing or sad film clips. In findings replicated across studies, targets who suppressed either amusement or sadness were judged as less extraverted, less agreeable, and more interpersonally avoidant and anxious than targets who expressed emotions, and participants were less interested in affiliating with suppressors compared with expressers. Effects were amplified when targets suppressed amusement (compared with sadness) and when participants knew the emotional context (compared with when they did not) and, thus, could form expectations about what emotions targets should be showing. Extraversion and agreeableness judgments mediated the effect of suppression on participants' disinterest in affiliating. In Study 2, which extended Study 1 in several ways, effects were pronounced for the enthusiasm aspect of extraversion and the compassion aspect of agreeableness. We also found evidence that judgments of suppressors do not simply fall between neutral and fully expressing targets; rather, judgments of suppressors are qualitatively different. We discuss implications for understanding the social consequences of emotion regulation-in particular, how beyond disrupting relationships, suppression may prevent some relationships from even forming in the first place.