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OBJECTIVE: We explore the idea that inhibitory self-control and prohedonic emotion regulation may be incompatible concerns. BACKGROUND: Specifically, we propose that because some forms of self-control involve denying oneself hedonic pleasures, it may lead to negative affect. Because people may then prioritize emotion regulation over self-control, negative affect may in turn lead to emotion regulation efforts, specifically the use of emotion regulation strategies, and an increased likelihood of self-control failure. METHOD: To explore the relationship between emotion regulation and self-control in daily life, we conducted a secondary analysis of a 6-week, 6-signal-per-day ambulatory assessment data set (N = 125 participants with a total of 22,845 completed measurement occasions). RESULTS: Consistent with our predictions, we found that self-control efforts of resisting a pleasurable desire led to significantly increased subsequent negative affect, which, in turn, led to significantly increased emotion regulation efforts and to significantly more likely self-control failures. CONCLUSIONS: We found evidence for the notion that inhibitory self-control and prohedonic emotion regulation are, on average, somewhat incompatible concerns. We discuss our findings in the context of other phenomena in which emotion regulation concerns may conflict with the pursuit of other goals.
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OBJECTIVE: Self-control is positively connected to well-being, but less is known about what, on the mechanistic level, explains this association. We hypothesized five pathways how this connection could be explained by emotion regulation, that is, by facilitating (a) strategy effectiveness, (b), adaptive strategy selection, (c) situation selection, (d) strategy variability, or (e) social sharing. METHOD: To explore these pathways, we integrated two ambulatory assessment data sets (N = 250 participants, N = 22,796 observations) that included assessments of participants' emotions and their emotion regulation efforts. RESULTS: We found that self-control was positively associated with affective well-being. Moreover, momentary but not trait self-control was associated with favoring adaptive and interpersonal strategy selection and less emotion regulation in general as well as with increased variability across strategies. However, these emotion regulation facets could not sufficiently explain the association between self-control and affective well-being. CONCLUSIONS: Our main conclusion is that emotion regulation is not a mediator of the strong relation between self-control and affective well-being. Instead, we found evidence for the affective benefits of employing ways of emotion regulation that are less taxing mentally, which we discuss in light of current knowledge about self-control and emotion regulation.
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Regulação Emocional , Autocontrole , Emoções , Emprego , Humanos , FenótipoRESUMO
Mindfulness is associated with a wide range of beneficial outcomes such as well-being. However, less is known about the mechanisms underlying these benefits. Some researchers suggest that the benefits could be driven by emotion regulation, either by improving the effectiveness of emotion regulation or by lessening the need for effortful emotion regulation. By using two longitudinal Ambulatory Assessment data sets (NStudy1 = 125, NStudy2 = 175), based on a six-week randomised controlled trial and a one-week study, we tested these competing notions in daily life and found support for the latter: Mindfulness, and especially its non-judgmental acceptance facet, was significantly associated with less use of emotion regulation strategies. However, mindfulness was not significantly associated with more effective emotion regulation strategy implementation. Moreover, the mindfulness training focusing on present-moment attention and awareness did not significantly influence emotion regulation. These findings demonstrate the importance of the non-judgmental acceptance component for emotion regulation and affective well-being.
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Regulação Emocional , Atenção Plena , Adolescente , Adulto , Atenção , Emoções/fisiologia , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino , Adulto JovemRESUMO
Although the importance of contextual factors is often recognised, research on emotion regulation strategies (ERS) has mainly focused so far on the effectiveness of ERS across situations. In the present research, we tested the strategy-situation fit hypothesis, which does not assume general effectiveness of ERS but instead stresses the importance of the congruency between ERS and the contexts in which they are used. Using a longitudinal Ambulatory Assessment dataset (N = 138), we found that controllability of a situation positively moderated the effectiveness of interpersonal ERS, such that, e.g. providing feedback to others was significantly associated with less positive feelings but only in less controllable situations. Intrapersonal ERS were negatively moderated by controllability, such that downplaying a negative situation was associated with less negative feelings in less controllable situations. Finally, favouring interpersonal over intrapersonal ERS was also positively moderated by controllability, demonstrating the situational fit of ERS in daily life.
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Ajustamento Emocional/fisiologia , Regulação Emocional/fisiologia , Relações Interpessoais , Adulto , Emoções/fisiologia , Feminino , Humanos , Estudos Longitudinais , Masculino , Estudantes/psicologia , Adulto JovemRESUMO
PURPOSE: Despite increasing evidence suggesting that music listening in daily life has stress-reducing effects, studies mostly rely on subjective, retrospective data on music listening. Thus, the temporal dynamics underlying the stress-reducing effect of music listening remain unclear. Therefore, we aimed to examine the temporal dynamics of the associations between stress and music listening by assessing subjective and objective data on music in daily life. DESIGN: An exploratory Ambulatory Assessment study examining a total of 60 participants (37 women), aged 18 to 34 years (M = 22.4 years, SD = 3.5) was conducted. METHODS: For 1 week, participants answered questions on music listening and stress six times per day via an electronic diary device, which additionally objectively sampled the exact time point of music listening and its duration. RESULTS: Self-reports on mere music listening were associated with lower stress reports, whereas objectively assessed data was not. However, concerning duration of music listening, both subjective and objective data on music listening showed associations between a minimum of 20 min of music listening and lower stress reports. Concerning the latency, objective data on music listening revealed that the association between stress reports and music listening occurs in a time-delayed manner. CONCLUSIONS: Although the study design does not allow for causal inferences, substantial associations among subjectively and objectively assessed data on music listening were found to differentially affect the experience of stress after music listening. In particular, when focusing on the temporal dynamics, objectively assessed data allowed for a more fine-grained analysis. In consequence, subjectively and objectively reported data on music listening should be assessed jointly when investigating effects of music listening on health. Experimental research with rigorous methodological control is required in order to corroborate our findings in a laboratory setting.
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Música , Estresse Psicológico/psicologia , Adolescente , Adulto , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino , Autorrelato , Adulto JovemRESUMO
Rumination has been demonstrated to have negative consequences on affect, behaviour, and physiological markers. Recent studies, however, suggest that distinct "modes" of anger-associated rumination may lead to several positive consequences. Previous research primarily used recall procedures of anger episodes to elicit anger. By contrast, the present study focused on the effect of subjective anger on the process of rumination and tested its effects in a "staged" social interaction where a confederate provoked participants. Subsequently, participants engaged in rumination about the anger-eliciting event either in an abstract-distanced or a concrete-immersed rumination mode. Results showed an adaptive effect of abstract-distanced rumination on subjective anger primarily if anger is high prior to rumination. The findings also suggest different self-reported anger-related coping strategies in response to subjective anger intensity. These findings highlight that an abstract-distanced rumination may have differential effects on affective outcomes and anger-related coping strategies.
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Adaptação Psicológica , Ira , Pensamento , Adolescente , Adulto , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino , Adulto JovemRESUMO
Positive affect (PA) can either improve or impair self-control performance, depending on whether two tasks are dissimilar, and thus require flexible releasing and switching, or similar, which requires stable maintenance. The present study suggests that this effect is mediated by attentional shifts. The authors found that participants under PA, who performed on two dissimilar tasks and had to switch to a new response dimension, were less attentive to distracting information compared to neutral affect (NE), leading to better performance. In contrast, participants under PA who did not have to switch, were more attentive to distracting information compared to participants under NE. These findings highlight the opposite effects of PA on consecutive self-control.
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Afeto , Atenção , Controles Informais da Sociedade , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino , Desempenho Psicomotor , Tempo de Reação , Adulto JovemRESUMO
Affect induction procedures are effectively implemented in psychological research. However, because participants are typically asked to self-report their affect immediately after viewing emotional stimuli, the goal of eliciting affect is relatively easy for participants to infer, making their responses susceptible to demand effects. To examine this demand effect, research has used an unrelated-studies paradigm, in which participants are led to believe that they are participating in two different, unrelated studies. While this paradigm has been used in some studies using affect induction procedures, none have examined the extent of demand effects in affect induction procedures. To do so, we conducted six online experiments (N = 170, N = 254, N = 664, N = 260, N = 239, N = 249) by contrasting an unrelated- with a related-studies design. The participants in the related-studies condition were to believe that the affect measurement after the induction belonged to the same pretest as the affect induction, whereas the participants in the unrelated-studies condition were to believe that this measurement was part of a second, unrelated pretest. We found that a related- versus unrelated-studies design produced a significant demand effect for both positive and negative affect, as indicated by greater increases in positive and negative affect in the related-studies compared with the unrelated-studies condition. Demand effects were also found on some indirect measures of affect, as reflected by a significantly smaller self-reported momentary thought-action repertoire, but not by worse memory performance or more distrust in the related-studies condition. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).
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Methodical developments facilitated research on the time-dynamic nature of emotions, introducing novel emotion dynamic measures such as emotional inertia that initially showed significant associations with well-being outcomes like depressive symptoms. However, recent research has challenged this notion by demonstrating that negative emotion inertia's explanatory power in predicting depressive symptoms vanished once mean negative emotion was controlled for. Emotional inertia is often modeled by a two-step approach that first derives estimates of emotional inertia and then uses those to predict depressive symptoms. In the present research, we reanalyzed five experience sampling data sets (N = 875 participants) and demonstrate that this two-step approach leads to low reliability of negative emotion inertia, r¯sb = .52; thereby, attenuating its association with depressive symptoms, as reflected by only 1.3% added explained variance in depressive symptoms above mean negative emotion. As an alternative, we propose a novel one-step approach that adjusts for unreliability of inertia estimates: We introduce a latent inertia factor that is defined by the autocorrelation of various emotion items. Using dynamic structural equation models, this latent factor is simultaneously used to predict depressive symptoms. Here, negative emotion inertia showed good reliability, ω¯ = .81, and explained an additional 4.5% of the total variance in depressive symptoms. Thus, our results demonstrate that emotion dynamic measures can be an important feature of individual well-being if their lower reliability compared with mean negative emotion is modeled and corrected for in dynamic structural equation models. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).
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Depressão , Emoções , Humanos , Depressão/psicologia , Reprodutibilidade dos TestesRESUMO
Reappraisal and mindfulness represent two fundamentally different but interconnected ways of dealing with one's emotions: whereas reappraisal is aimed at changing one's thoughts and emotions, mindfulness is aimed at not immediately changing, but appreciating them. Despite this difference, prior research has shown that both are beneficial for one's affective well-being. However, research on the spontaneous use of reappraisal and mindfulness in daily life found that they might be differentially associated with positive and negative affect, with reappraisal and mindful attention being more strongly associated with increased positive affect and mindful acceptance with decreased negative affect. Moreover, the spontaneous use of reappraisal may be less effective than mindfulness in daily life given that it is more cognitively taxing. To compare these possibly different benefits (i.e., change in positive and negative affect) and costs (i.e., feeling depleted), we re-analyzed two experience sampling studies (N = 125 and N = 179). Regarding benefits, endorsing reappraisal and mindful attention was significantly associated with increases in positive affect, whereas endorsing mindful acceptance was significantly associated with decreases in negative affect. Regarding costs, we found that endorsing reappraisal led to more depletion and that reappraisal was selected less often than mindfulness in daily life. Our results demonstrate the importance of assessing not only the different benefits but also the costs of emotion regulation in daily life. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42761-022-00178-7.
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OBJECTIVE: Negative affectivity (NA) is associated with the emergence and persistence of physical symptoms with unclear organic pathology. This study investigated the temporal dynamics of NA and somatic symptom burden using ecological momentary assessment (EMA) in adults with somatic symptom disorder (SSD) and healthy control participants (HC). METHODS: Participants underwent a seven-day, smartphone-based EMA, with 6 randomly-stratified time points per day. NA was assessed using a five-item short form of the Positive and Negative Affectivity Scale (PANAS) and somatic symptom burden with two self-constructed items. 22 persons with SSD and 20 HCs were included in multilevel analyses. RESULTS: Within-person analyses showed a significantly stronger (positive) association of concurrent NA with somatic symptom burden in participants with SSD than in HCs, ß = 0.15, SE = 0.04, p = .001. Time-lagged analyses demonstrated that, across groups, NA at a previous time point t-1 significantly predicted somatic symptom burden at the subsequent timepoint t, ß = 0.09, SE = 0.03, p = .005, but not in the other direction (somatic symptom burdent-1â NAt, ß = 0.01, SE = 0.04, p = .79). Between-person analyses showed that both inertia (i.e., persistence of negative affective states), d = 0.74, and instability (i.e., magnitude of moment-to-moment fluctuations), d = 0.76 of NA were significantly higher in participants with SSD than in HCs. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings sustain the idea of (negative) affect-driven modulation in somatic signal processing and suggest that interoceptive and emotional differentiation training can advance the psychotherapeutic treatment of SSD.
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Apatia , Sintomas Inexplicáveis , Transtornos Mentais , Adulto , Humanos , Avaliação Momentânea Ecológica , EmoçõesRESUMO
Objectives: While self-compassion (SC) has mostly been understood as a stable trait-like property, growing evidence suggests that it may fluctuate over time within a given individual. However, little is known on how these fluctuations relate to affective well-being and affective dynamics, such as emotional inertia and stress reactivity in daily life. Methods: A sample of 119 non-clinical individuals (mean age: 31.3 years, 53.8% female) completed a 7-day smartphone-based ecological momentary assessment study with six semi-random signals per day. With each signal, individuals reported their momentary positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA), recent SC, and occurrence and perceived strain of daily hassles since the last signal. Results: Whenever individuals reported higher recent SC than usual, they experienced higher momentary PA and lower momentary NA. Moreover, higher recent SC related to lower stress reactivity in terms of lower decrease of PA and lower increase of NA following the experience of daily hassles. No associations between SC and emotional inertia were found. When distinguishing between the positive components (SC-Pos) and negative components (SC-Neg) of SC, SC-Neg (compared to SC-Pos) was more strongly connected to NA, while SC-Pos and SC-Neg were similarly connected to PA. SC-Pos was associated with an attenuated NA stress reactivity, and SC-Neg with an increased NA stress reactivity. SC-Pos and SC-Neg did not significantly moderate PA stress reactivity nor emotional inertia. Conclusions: Results show that the benefits of SC for well-being and stress reactivity may unfold whenever we treat ourselves with compassion, irrespective of how self-compassionate we are in general. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12671-022-02050-y.
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Recent research has demonstrated the adaptiveness of variability in emotion regulation (ER) by showing that variability between and, when controlled for depression, within ER strategies as assessed via the standard deviation was associated with less negative affect. We first replicated associations with negative affect by using the relative standard deviation, which is less confounded with the mean. Second, following research on affect dynamics, we extended this line of research by examining five additional ER dynamic measures covering ER instability, inertia, predictability, differentiation, and diversity. Reanalyzing data from five ambulatory assessment data sets (N = 717), we found that (a) the eight ER dynamic measures loaded on five factors that explained unique variance, (b) most ER dynamic measures had good reliabilities, and (c) between-strategy mean endorsement was positively, whereas between-strategy variability and ER predictability were negatively associated with negative affect. These results suggest that the variable but predictable use of emotion regulation strategies in daily life is beneficial for individuals' affective well-being in daily life. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
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Regulação Emocional , Gerenciamento de Dados , Emoções/fisiologia , HumanosRESUMO
Research based on the process model of emotion regulation has largely focused on affective outcomes of four prominent emotion regulation strategies: distraction, rumination, reappraisal, and suppression. We identified two areas that are relatively understudied regarding the prediction of affect in daily life: (a) comparing the importance of these four strategies to the subjective experience of event intensity and (b) including additional emotion regulation strategies that focus more on positive than negative affect. In two ecological momentary assessment data sets (Nindividuals = 299), we found that event intensity explained an average of 14.8% (4.9% to 25.9%) of the total variance in momentary affect above the variance explained by emotion regulation strategies. In turn, emotion regulation strategies explained an average of 8.3% (2.4% to 19.6%) in additional total variance in momentary affect. The added predictive power of emotion regulation strategies above event intensity was improved when strategies more specific to positive affect (ΔR² = 5.1%) were included. These results highlight avenues for future research that include strategies that focus on the selection and modification of an emotionally relevant situation and on positive affect. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).
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Regulação Emocional , Humanos , Emoções/fisiologia , Avaliação Momentânea Ecológica , Gerenciamento de DadosRESUMO
While prior research has found mindfulness to be linked with emotional responses to events, less is known about this effect in a non-clinical sample. Even less is known regarding the mechanisms of the underlying processes: It is unclear whether participants who exhibit increased acceptance show decreased emotional reactivity (i.e., lower affective responses towards events overall) or a speedier emotional recovery (i.e., subsequent decrease in negative affect) due to adopting an accepting stance. To address these questions, we re-analysed two Ambulatory Assessment data sets. The first (NStudy1 = 125) was a 6-week randomized controlled trial (including a 40-day ambulatory assessment); the second (NStudy2 = 175) was a 1-week ambulatory assessment study. We found state mindfulness to be more strongly associated with emotional reactivity than with recovery, and that only emotional reactivity was significantly dampened by mindfulness training. Regarding the different facets of mindfulness, we found that the strongest predictor of both emotional reactivity and recovery was non-judgemental acceptance. Finally, we found that being aware of one's own thoughts and behaviour could be beneficial or detrimental for emotional recovery, depending on whether participants accepted their thoughts and emotions. Together, these findings provide evidence for predictions derived from the monitoring and acceptance theory.
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Atenção Plena , Estresse Psicológico , Emoções , Humanos , Estresse Psicológico/psicologiaRESUMO
There is an active debate regarding whether the ego depletion effect is real. A recent preregistered experiment with the Stroop task as the depleting task and the antisaccade task as the outcome task found a medium-level effect size. In the current research, we conducted a preregistered multilab replication of that experiment. Data from 12 labs across the globe (N = 1,775) revealed a small and significant ego depletion effect, d = 0.10. After excluding participants who might have responded randomly during the outcome task, the effect size increased to d = 0.16. By adding an informative, unbiased data point to the literature, our findings contribute to clarifying the existence, size, and generality of ego depletion.
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Mindfulness plays an important role in moderating affect dynamics. To date, associations between mindfulness and affect dynamics have mostly been examined with mindfulness as a trait-like characteristic. However, examining associations between momentary mindfulness and affect dynamics could reveal important within-person processes underlying mindfulness and wellbeing. The present study first examined dispositional mindfulness as a 1-dimensional as well as a multifaceted construct in relation to affect dynamics (instability, inertia, and valence switch). We further investigated how momentary mindfulness predicts affect dynamics, and how training momentary mindfulness with a mindfulness training influences affect dynamics in daily life. A final sample of 125 undergraduate students took part in a 6-week randomized controlled trial, either engaging in a low-intensity mindfulness training (n = 61) or being part of a wait-list control condition (n = 64). We assessed participants' low and high arousal positive (PA) and negative affect (NA) and their momentary mindfulness 6 times a day for 40 consecutive days by implementing an ambulatory assessment (AA) protocol during either the mindfulness training or waiting period, respectively. We found that the dispositional mindfulness facet present-awareness was negatively associated with low arousal NA inertia and a lower switching propensity. However, we found momentary mindfulness to be positively associated with low arousal PA inertia, a lower switching propensity to NA and less instability. Furthermore, participants who practiced mindfulness experienced reduced low arousal NA inertia. These findings demonstrate that momentary mindfulness may be helpful in promoting adaptive affect experiences and maintaining PA, which could ultimately foster affective well-being. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
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Afeto/fisiologia , Felicidade , Atenção Plena/métodos , Adulto , Feminino , Humanos , Masculino , Adulto JovemRESUMO
[This corrects the article DOI: 10.2196/14566.].
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The occurrence of daily hassles is associated with increased subsequent levels of negative affect. Neuroticism has been found to exacerbate this effect. So far, most research used single-item measures for the assessment of daily hassles or relied on daily diary studies. This study aimed to examine the interrelations of daily hassles, negative affect reactivity, and neuroticism in daily life employing an extensive inventory of daily hassles. Seventy participants (18-30 years; M = 23.9 years, 59% female) completed a 4-week smartphone-based ecological momentary assessment study reporting the occurrence and perceived strain of daily hassles as well as negative affect at five semi-random signals between 9 a.m. and 8 p.m. Multilevel analyses revealed significant associations between elevated levels of negative affect and higher cumulative daily hassle strain ratings per signal in concurrent and time-lagged analyses. Contrary to our expectations, there was no moderation by neuroticism on these associations. The results suggest that daily hassles can accumulate in their impact on mood in daily life and exert a prolonged effect on negative affect. The absence of a significant moderation by neuroticism may be interpreted in the light of methodological specifics of this study.