Explaining Away: A Model of Affective Adaptation

An adaptation level theory of tinnitus audibility

Models of tinnitus suggest roles for auditory, attention, and emotional networks in tinnitus perception. A model of tinnitus audibility based on Helson’s (1964) adaptation level theory (ALT) is hypothesized to explain the relationship between tinnitus audibility, personality, memory, and attention. This theory attempts to describe how tinnitus audibility or detectability might change with experience and context. The basis of ALT and potential role of auditory scene analysis in tinnitus perception are discussed. The proposed psychoacoustic model lends itself to incorporation into existing neurophysiological models of tinnitus perception. It is hoped that the ALT hypothesis will allow for greater empirical investigation of factors influencing tinnitus perception, such as attention and tinnitus sound therapies.

Facets of Emotional Clarity and Suspiciousness

In a college student sample, we explored the relations between individual differences in facets of emotional clarity and suspiciousness. Previous theory and research has treated emotional clarity as a one-dimensional construct. Boden and Berenbaum (2011) proposed that a second facet of emotional clarity, source awareness (a general understanding of the cause of their emotions), could be distinguished from type awareness (a general understanding of the type of emotions [anger, fear] experienced). We found that source and type awareness were incrementally, inversely associated with suspiciousness when statistically accounting for the extent to which emotions are attended to, and gender. Additionally, source awareness significantly predicted suspiciousness after accounting for anger, anxious arousal, and social anxiety, whereas type awareness did not. Findings are consistent with the hypothesis that, among individuals with low source and type awareness, suspicious beliefs are formed to make sense of and explain emotional arousal.

The Challenge of Staying Happier

The happiness that comes from a particular success or change in fortune abates with time. The Hedonic Adaptation Prevention (HAP) model specifies two routes by which the well-being gains derived from a positive life change are eroded—the first involving bottom-up processes (i.e., declining positive emotions generated by the positive change) and the second involving top-down processes (i.e., increased aspirations for even more positivity). The model also specifies two moderators that can forestall these processes—continued appreciation of the original life change and continued variety in change-related experiences. The authors formally tested the predictions of the HAP model in a 3-month three-wave longitudinal study of 481 students. Temporal path analyses and moderated regression analyses provided good support for the model. Implications for the stability of well-being, the feasibility of “the pursuit of happiness,” and the appeal of overconsumption are discussed.

Subjective well-being and adaptation to life events: a meta-analysis

Previous research has shown that major life events can have short- and long-term effects on subjective well-being (SWB). The present meta-analysis examines (a) whether life events have different effects on affective and cognitive well-being and (b) how the rate of adaptation varies across different life events. Longitudinal data from 188 publications (313 samples, N = 65,911) were integrated to describe the reaction and adaptation to 4 family events (marriage, divorce, bereavement, childbirth) and 4 work events (unemployment, reemployment, retirement, relocation/migration). The findings show that life events have very different effects on affective and cognitive well-being and that for most events the effects of life events on cognitive well-being are stronger and more consistent across samples. Different life events differ in their effects on SWB, but these effects are not a function of the alleged desirability of events. The results are discussed with respect to their theoretical implications, and recommendations for future studies on adaptation are given.

Subjective responses to emotional stimuli during labeling, reappraisal, and distraction

Although multiple neuroimaging studies suggest that affect labeling (i.e., putting feelings into words) can dampen affect-related responses in the amygdala, the consequences of affect labeling have not been examined in other channels of emotional responding. We conducted four studies examining the effect of affect labeling on self-reported emotional experience. In study one, self-reported distress was lower during affect labeling, compared to passive watching, of negative emotional pictures. Studies two and three added reappraisal and distraction conditions, respectively. Affect labeling showed similar effects on self-reported distress as both of these intentional emotion regulation strategies. In each of the first three studies, however, participant predictions about the effects of affect labeling suggest that unlike reappraisal and distraction, people do not believe affect labeling to be an effective emotion regulation strategy. Even after having the experience of affect labels leading to lower distress, participants still predicted that affect labeling would increase distress in the future. Thus, affect labeling is best described as an incidental emotion regulation process. Finally, study four employed positive emotional pictures and here, affect labeling was associated with diminished self-reported pleasure, relative to passive watching. This suggests that affect labeling tends to dampen affective responses in general, rather than specifically alleviating negative affect.

Emotion-Regulation Choice

Despite centuries of speculation about how to manage negative emotions, little is actually known about which emotion-regulation strategies people choose to use when confronted with negative situations of varying intensity. On the basis of a new process conception of emotion regulation, we hypothesized that in low-intensity negative situations, people would show a relative preference to choose to regulate emotions by engagement reappraisal, which allows emotional processing. However, we expected people in high-intensity negative situations to show a relative preference to choose to regulate emotions by disengagement distraction, which blocks emotional processing at an early stage before it gathers force. In three experiments, we created emotional contexts that varied in intensity, using either emotional pictures (Experiments 1 and 2) or unpredictable electric stimulation (Experiment 3). In response to these emotional contexts, participants chose between using either reappraisal or distraction as an emotion-regulation strategy. Results in all experiments supported our hypothesis. This pattern in the choice of emotion-regulation strategies has important implications for the understanding of healthy adaptation.

Perceived health in lung cancer patients: the role of positive and negative affect

PURPOSE

To examine the association of affective experience and health-related quality of life in lung cancer patients, we hypothesized that negative affect would be positively, and positive affect would be negatively, associated with perceived health.

METHODS

A sample of 133 English-speaking lung cancer patients (33% female; mean age = 63.68 years old, SD = 9.37) completed a battery of self-report surveys.

RESULTS

Results of our secondary analysis indicate that trait negative affect was significantly associated with poor physical and social functioning, greater role limitations due to emotional problems, greater bodily pain, and poor general health. Positive affect was significantly associated with adaptive social functioning, fewer emotion-based role limitations, and less severe bodily pain. In a full model, positive affect was significantly associated with greater levels of social functioning and general health, over and above the effects of negative affect.

CONCLUSIONS

Reduction of negative affect is an important therapeutic goal, but the ability to maintain positive affect may result in greater perceived health. Indeed, engagement in behaviors that result in greater state positive affect may, over time, result in dispositional changes and enhancement of quality of life.

Making Meaning out of Negative Experiences by Self-Distancing

Both common wisdom and findings from multiple areas of research suggest that it is helpful to understand and make meaning out of negative experiences. However, people’s attempts to do so often backfire, leading them to ruminate and feel worse. Here we attempt to shed light on these seemingly contradictory sets of findings by examining the role that self-distancing plays in facilitating adaptive self-reflection. We begin by briefly describing the “self-reflection paradox.” We then define self-distancing, present evidence from multiple levels of analysis that illustrate how this process facilitates adaptive self-reflection, and discuss the basic science and practical implications of this research.

Is Timing Everything? Temporal Considerations in Emotion Regulation

It is often said that timing is everything. The process model of emotion regulation has taken this aphorism to heart, suggesting that down-regulating emotions before they are “up and running” is always easier than down-regulating emotions once they have gathered force (i.e., generic timing hypothesis). But does timing (i.e., emotion intensity) matter equally for all forms of regulation? In this article, the authors offer an alternative process-specific timing hypothesis, in which emotion-generative and emotion-regulatory processes compete at either earlier or later stages of information processing. Regulation strategies that target early processing stages require minimal effort. Therefore, their efficacy should be relatively unaffected by emotion intensity. By contrast, regulation strategies that target later processing stages require effort that is proportional to the intensity of the emotional response. Therefore, their efficacy should be determined by the relative strength of regulatory versus emotional processes. Implications of this revised conception are considered.

Moving forward during major goal blockage: situational goal adjustment in women facing infertility

Individuals confronting chronic medical conditions often face profound challenges to cherished life goals. The primary aim of this study was to examine the associations of goal adjustment with psychological adjustment in the context of infertility. At study entry (T1; n = 97) and 6 months later (T2; n = 47), women in fertility treatment completed measures of goal blockage, goal adjustment ability, and psychological adjustment. At T1, greater perceived and actual goal blockage were related to negative psychological adjustment. Ability to disengage from the goal of biological parenthood was associated with less infertility-specific thought intrusion, whereas engagement with other goals was related to fewer depressive symptoms and greater positive states of mind. Greater general goal engagement was protective against the negative relationships between low goal disengagement and the dependent variables. Promoting letting go of the unattainable and investing in the possible may be a useful intervention to foster well-being among individuals experiencing profound goal blockage.

“He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not . . . ”

This research qualifies a social psychological truism: that people like others who like them (the reciprocity principle). College women viewed the Facebook profiles of four male students who had previously seen their profiles. They were told that the men (a) liked them a lot, (b) liked them only an average amount, or (c) liked them either a lot or an average amount (uncertain condition). Comparison of the first two conditions yielded results consistent with the reciprocity principle. Participants were more attracted to men who liked them a lot than to men who liked them an average amount. Results for the uncertain condition, however, were consistent with research on the pleasures of uncertainty. Participants in the uncertain condition were most attracted to the men—even more attracted than were participants who were told that the men liked them a lot. Uncertain participants reported thinking about the men the most, and this increased their attraction toward the men.

Getting used to it: the adaptive global utility model

This paper expands the standard model of utility maximization to endogenize the ubiquitous phenomenon of adaptation. We assume that total utility is an aggregate function of the utility associated with different domains of life, with relative weights that are optimized according to the effort that the individual expends on producing utility in each domain. Comparative statics from the general maximization problem demonstrate that the traditional Slutsky equation should incorporate an additional response term to account for adaptation processes. Our adaptive global utility maximization model can be used to explain responses to changes in health.

Motivation in Mental Accessibility: Relevance Of A Representation (ROAR) as a New Framework

The notion of accessibility of mental representations has been invaluable in explaining and predicting human thought and action. Focusing on social cognition, we review the large corpus of data that has accumulated since the first models of mental activation dynamics were outlined. We then outline a framework that we call Relevance of a Representation (or ROAR for short), the main tenant of which is that not all stimulated representations are in fact activated (i.e., influence thought and action processes). More specifically, we propose that the degree to which a representation is available to processes of thought and action is a function of that representation's motivational relevance. We end by demonstrating how the framework enables re-addressing the notions of accessibility, automaticity and selective attention.

From a distance: implications of spontaneous self-distancing for adaptive self-reflection

Although recent experimental work indicates that self-distancing facilitates adaptive self-reflection, it remains unclear (a) whether spontaneous self-distancing leads to similar adaptive outcomes, (b) how spontaneous self-distancing relates to avoidance, and (c) how this strategy impacts interpersonal behavior. Three studies examined these issues demonstrating that the more participants spontaneously self-distanced while reflecting on negative memories, the less emotional (Studies 1-3) and cardiovascular (Study 2) reactivity they displayed in the short term. Spontaneous self-distancing was also associated with lower emotional reactivity and intrusive ideation over time (Study 1). The negative association between spontaneous self-distancing and emotional reactivity was mediated by how participants construed their experience (i.e., less recounting relative to reconstruing) rather than avoidance (Studies 1-2). In addition, spontaneous self-distancing was associated with more problem-solving behavior and less reciprocation of negativity during conflicts among couples in ongoing relationships (Study 3). Although spontaneous self-distancing was empirically related to trait rumination, it explained unique variance in predicting key outcomes.

From a distance: implications of spontaneous self-distancing for adaptive self-reflection

Although recent experimental work indicates that self-distancing facilitates adaptive self-reflection, it remains unclear (a) whether spontaneous self-distancing leads to similar adaptive outcomes, (b) how spontaneous self-distancing relates to avoidance, and (c) how this strategy impacts interpersonal behavior. Three studies examined these issues demonstrating that the more participants spontaneously self-distanced while reflecting on negative memories, the less emotional (Studies 1-3) and cardiovascular (Study 2) reactivity they displayed in the short term. Spontaneous self-distancing was also associated with lower emotional reactivity and intrusive ideation over time (Study 1). The negative association between spontaneous self-distancing and emotional reactivity was mediated by how participants construed their experience (i.e., less recounting relative to reconstruing) rather than avoidance (Studies 1-2). In addition, spontaneous self-distancing was associated with more problem-solving behavior and less reciprocation of negativity during conflicts among couples in ongoing relationships (Study 3). Although spontaneous self-distancing was empirically related to trait rumination, it explained unique variance in predicting key outcomes.

Sensitivity to violence measured by ratings of severity increases after nonviolence training

It was hypothesized that training in nonviolence would increase participants' sensitivity to violence because such training emphasizes both the harm and the avoidability of many kinds of violence. This research built upon earlier studies, which had proposed that ratings of the severity of violent behaviors (e.g., murder, bullying, cursing) can be interpreted as measuring sensitivity to violence. Two quasi-experiments examined changes in ratings of severity obtained before and after nonviolence training. In Study 1, 28 college-age traffic offenders who received nonviolence training judged stimulus behaviors ranging from life-threatening physical harm to verbal disrespect as more violent after their training. An untrained comparison group did not show this change. In Study 2, 30 student teachers who received instruction in nonviolence also rated behaviors as more violent after training; an untrained comparison group did not. Results are interpreted as showing increased sensitivity to violence following exposure to nonviolence.

Why the brain talks to itself: sources of error in emotional prediction

People typically choose pleasure over pain. But how do they know which of these their choices will entail? The brain generates mental simulations (previews) of future events, which produce affective reactions (premotions), which are then used as a basis for forecasts (predictions) about the future event's emotional consequences. Research shows that this process leads to systematic errors of prediction. We review evidence indicating that these errors can be traced to five sources.

Response shift in self-reported functional scores after knee microfracture for full thickness cartilage lesions

OBJECTIVE

Our aim was to determine whether response shift (RS), a change in the internal standards of a patient, occurs in patients treated for full thickness knee cartilage defects. We have also evaluated the effect of functional scores on patient satisfaction after surgery.

DESIGN

Self-administered questionnaires were used to evaluate pre- and post-operative and retrospective post-operative scores of 53 patients following knee microfracture. Patient satisfaction, Lysholm, Visual Analogue Scale (VAS) for pain and modified International Knee Documentation Committee (IKDC) scores were evaluated. RS (pre-test-then-test), unadjusted and adjusted treatment effects (UTE and ATE) and their effect sizes were calculated.

RESULTS

All four functional outcome measures had a positive RS. The effect size of the RS ranged from around 0.35 for the Lysholm and IKDC2 score to over 0.9 for the VAS pain score. Gender, age, smoking status and time since follow-up did not significantly affect the RS. RS did not differ significantly between the three patient satisfaction groups (P>0.05). Post-operative Lysholm and IKDC1 scores differed most significantly between the satisfaction groups.

CONCLUSIONS

All four scores had a significant shift, implying that patients thought they felt worse before the operation in retrospect than they did at the time. The traditional way of assessing treatment effect, difference between post-intervention and pre-intervention functional scores, may be confounded by change in the internal standards of the patient and should take this into account. RS did not affect the clinical interpretation in this case series. Patient-reported satisfaction after surgery is only related to post-operative scores.

When the self becomes other: toward an integrative understanding of the processes distinguishing adaptive self-reflection from rumination

How can people adaptively analyze and "work through" negative feelings without ruminating? This paper will briefly review findings from an integrative program of research, which suggests that a critical factor determining whether people's attempts to adaptively reason about negative experiences succeed or fail is the type of self-perspective they adopt. That is, whether people analyze their feelings from a self-immersed or self-distanced perspective. The implications of shifting self-perspectives for subjective experience, autonomic nervous system reactivity, and neural activity are discussed.

Reducing the impact bias in judgments of post-decisional affect: Distraction or task interference?

People overestimate their affective reactions to future events and decisions — a phenomenon that has been termed “impact bias.” Evidence suggests that completing a diary detailing events contemporaneous with the focal one de-biases judgments of affect. It is generally assumed that this is because diary completion helps people to realize that they will be distracted from the focal event. However, there is another possibility: de-biasing may occur because diary completion interferes with the processing responsible for the bias. In a first experiment, we showed that diary completion also lowers affect associated with past decisions. In a second experiment, we showed that solving anagrams has the same effect. A third experiment demonstrates that this is not because affect judgments are influenced by mood changes brought about by solving anagrams. Indeed, monitoring moods lowered affect in the same way as diary completion. It appears that cognitive tasks of any sort interfere with the processing required by judgments of affect.

Looking to the future to appreciate the present: the benefits of perceived temporal scarcity

Both psychological research and conventional wisdom suggest that it can be difficult to attend to and derive enjoyment from the pleasant things in life. The present study examined whether focusing on the imminent ending of a positive life experience can lead to increased enjoyment. A temporal distance manipulation was used to make college graduation seem more or less close at hand. Twice a week over the course of 2 weeks, college students were told to write about their college life, with graduation being framed as either very close or very far off. As predicted, thinking about graduation as being close led to a significant increase in college-related behaviors and subjective well-being over the course of the study. The present research provides support for the counterintuitive hypothesis that thinking about an experience's ending can enhance one's present enjoyment of it.

It's a wonderful life: mentally subtracting positive events improves people's affective states, contrary to their affective forecasts

The authors hypothesized that thinking about the absence of a positive event from one's life would improve affective states more than thinking about the presence of a positive event but that people would not predict this when making affective forecasts. In Studies 1 and 2, college students wrote about the ways in which a positive event might never have happened and was surprising or how it became part of their life and was unsurprising. As predicted, people in the former condition reported more positive affective states. In Study 3, college student forecasters failed to anticipate this effect. In Study 4, Internet respondents and university staff members who wrote about how they might never have met their romantic partner were more satisfied with their relationship than were those who wrote about how they did meet their partner. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for the literatures on gratitude induction and counterfactual reasoning.

How the Object of Affect Guides its Impact

In this article, we examine how affect influences judgment and thought, but also how thought transforms affect. The general thesis is that the nature and impact of affective reactions depends largely on their objects. We view affect as a representation of value, and its consequences as dependent on its object or what it is about. Within a review of relevant literature and a discussion of the nature of emotion, we focus on the role of the object of affect in governing both the nature of emotional reactions and the impact of affect and emotion on cognition and action. Although emotion is always about the here and now, the capacity for abstract thought means that the human here and now includes imagination as well as perception. Indeed, the hopes and fears that dominate human lives often involve things only imagined.