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

How do "words poorly expressed emotion" affect mental health? The mediating role of affect labelling effect

Previous studies have found that people with high negative emotional granularity(NEG) tend to have better health levels. It is generally believed that this is due to the selection and application of explicit emotion regulation strategies that affect mental health. However, no research has yet examined a more fundamental process, the role of affect labelling, an implicit emotion regulation strategy. This study focuses on the aforementioned issues and uses the experience sampling method to categorise participants into groups with high and low NEG. Using an affect labelling paradigm with ERP(event-related potential) technology, the study measures the effects of affect labelling in participants. Furthermore, it assesses the mental health levels of the participants through questionnaires to explore whether the affect labelling effect serves as a mediator between NEG and mental health. The results show that: (1) The high-NEG group exhibited significantly lower LPP wave amplitudes under affect labelling compared to under non-affect labelling, whereas the low-NEG group did not show significant differences. The results indicate that only the high-NEG group can produce the affect labelling effect. (2) The affect labelling effect mediates the relationship between NEG and mental health, meaning that NEG predicts mental health through the affect labelling effect.

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.

Effects of a brief online emotion word learning task on negative emotion differentiation, emotional self-efficacy, and prospective distress: Preliminary findings

BACKGROUND

Disruptions in emotion processing are common across psychological disorders. Research suggests that emotion differentiation (ED; specificity in language used to characterize one's emotional experience) and emotional self-efficacy (ESE; perceived ability to understand and manage one's emotions) are important transdiagnostic factors associated with various psychological benefits. Whether ED and ESE can be improved in adults remains largely unclear.

METHODS

Using a longitudinal prospective design, we tested a brief online training targeting emotion word knowledge (vs. a control condition) to see if it improved negative ED (NED) and ESE in a college sample. Moreover, we tested if changes in NED or ESE mediated the effects of the training on levels of psychological distress one week and two-months post-intervention.

RESULTS

Findings provided partial support for our hypotheses. Individuals whose ESE increased post-intervention reported lower levels of distress two months later. Moreover, exploratory analyses revealed those who demonstrated greater training engagement experienced increases in NED that in turn predicted lower distress one-week post-intervention. However, there were no direct effects of intervention group on NED or ESE and distress.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings highlight the potential of a remotely-administered emotion-language intervention to influence key dimensions of emotion processing and suggest avenues for further refinement. Both NED and ESE may be malleable for some, and that enhancements in ESE may produce long-term psychological benefits.

Emotion differentiation among individuals in a randomized clinical trial for alcohol use disorder: Within- and between-person associations with affect, craving, and alcohol use in daily life

Emotion differentiation refers to cognitively distinguishing among discrete, same-valenced emotions. Negative emotion differentiation (NED) is a transdiagnostic indicator of emotional functioning. The role of positive emotion differentiation (PED) in clinical disorders, including alcohol use disorder (AUD), is less understood. Further, despite consensus that emotions are highly variable, little is known about within-person fluctuations in NED/PED. The current study leveraged 84 consecutive daily smartphone surveys from participants (N = 181) in a clinical trial of cognitive behavioral therapy for AUD to investigate whether between-person differences in overall NED/PED, or within-person variability in daily NED/PED, were associated with affect intensity, craving, drinking, and heavy drinking in daily life. Subsequent analyses explored whether associations were moderated by baseline alexithymia. At the between-persons level, greater average PED, but not NED, was associated with lower heavy drinking odds. At the within-persons level, higher-than-usual PED was associated with lower negative affect and odds of any drinking. Individuals with baseline alexithymia had stronger negative within-person associations between daily NED and both any and heavy drinking. PED is a skill linked to less alcohol use between- and within-persons irrespective of baseline alexithymia, whereas greater daily NED appears especially important for reduced alcohol use among individuals with co-morbid AUD and alexithymia.

Examining the Role of Emotion Differentiation on Emotion and Cardiovascular Physiological Activity During Acute Stress

Emotion differentiation (ED) - the tendency to experience one's emotions with specificity - is a well-established predictor of adaptive responses to daily life stress. Yet, there is little research testing the role of ED in self-reported and physiological responses to an acute stressor. In the current study, we investigate the effects of negative emotion differentiation (NED) and positive emotion differentiation (PED) on participants' self-reported emotions and cardiac-mediated sympathetic nervous system reactivity (i.e., pre-ejection period) in response to a stressful task. Healthy young adults enrolled in a two-session study. At an initial session, participants completed a modified experience sampling procedure (i.e., the Day Reconstruction Method). At session 2, 195 completed the Trier Social Stress Test while cardiac impedance was acquired throughout. Linear regressions demonstrated that higher NED, but not PED, was associated with experiencing less intense self-reported negative, high arousal emotions (e.g., irritated, panicky) during the stressor (β =  - .15, p < .05) although people with higher NED also exhibited greater sympathetic reactivity (β = .16, p < .05). In exploratory analyses, we tested whether the effect of NED on self-reported stress was mediated by the tendency to make internally focus (or self-focused) attributions about performance on the task but did not find a significant indirect effect (p = .085). These results both complement prior work and provide a more complex picture of the role of NED in adaptive responses to stressful life events, suggesting that people with higher NED may experience their emotions as more manageable regardless of their level of physiological arousal.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42761-023-00189-y.

Emotional Granularity is Associated with Daily Experiential Diversity

Emotional granularity is the ability to create differentiated and nuanced emotional experiences and is associated with positive health outcomes. Individual differences in granularity are hypothesized to reflect differences in emotion concepts, which are informed by prior experience and impact current and future experience. Greater variation in experience, then, should be related to the rich and diverse emotion concepts that support higher granularity. Using natural language processing methods, we analyzed descriptions of everyday events to estimate the diversity of contexts and activities encountered by participants. Across three studies varying in language (English, Dutch) and modality (written, spoken), we found that participants who referred to a more varied and balanced set of contexts and activities reported more differentiated and nuanced negative emotions. Experiential diversity was not consistently associated with granularity for positive emotions. We discuss the contents of daily life as a potential source and outcome of individual differences in emotion.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42761-023-00185-2.

Using the theory of constructed emotion to inform the study of cognition-emotion interactions

In this article I suggest how theories of emotion construction may inform the study of cognition-emotion interactions. To do so, I adopt the two main concepts core affect and emotions as categories: Core affect, one's current affective state, which is defined by the two dimensions pleasure and arousal, is an inherent part of any conscious experience. Specific emotions are understood as categories including highly diverse exemplars. I argue that (1) affective states can and should not be differentiated from cognitive states, and that (2) specific emotions may follow the same principles as other biological or more general categories. I review some empirical evidence in support of these ideas and show avenues for future research.