Emotion

Despite significant interest in how social media use (SMU) is associated with college student depression, little consensus has been drawn in this area. We argue that a critical step forward is examining how college student depressive symptoms are associated with (a) the emotions students experience while engaged in SMU and (b) how individuals choose to engage in weekly SMU in ways known to impact their emotions. Data were collected in 2022. College students (N = 382) engaged in four SMU types (order randomized) for 3 min in real time during a controlled experiment. They rated their negative affect and positive affect before and after each SMU type. They also completed measures assessing weekly engagement in each SMU type and depressive symptoms. We examined how depressive symptoms were associated with (a) affect change during each SMU type during the experiment (i.e., experimental approach) and (b) with how people engaged in weekly SMU in ways known to influence their emotions experimentally (i.e., person-based survey approach). Depressive symptoms were associated with students feeling worse (more negative affect or less positive affect) during real-time engagement in all four SMU types. Depressive symptoms were also associated with greater weekly engagement in SMU types that were the ones that increased that person’s negative affect and decreased their positive affect. By considering multiple types of SMU and taking a person-based approach, our findings help clarify complicated associations between SMU and depression.

Kama Muta, a relatively new construct, is an emotion of social connection that describes the feeling of being moved to love through five key dimensions. Despite the growing body of research on the beneficial outcomes of Kama Muta, little is known about its antecedents. To fill this gap, this research focuses on the emergence of Kama Muta during social interactions by specifically examining what triggers this emotion in conversations. The theory on Kama Muta suggests it emerges in response to sudden relationship intensification. We propose that, in conversation, this intensification is most likely triggered by high-quality listening. We examined whether high-quality listening, characterized by undivided attention, understanding, acceptance, nonjudgment, and positive intentions, is associated with Kama Muta for both speakers and listeners. Data were collected across three studies (total N = 1,126), employing scenarios (Study 1), recall (Study 2), and live online conversations conducted via Zoom (Study 3). We found general support for our hypotheses. Specifically, both speakers (Studies 1–3) and listeners (Studies 2–3) experiencing high-quality listening reported greater Kama Muta compared to those exposed to lower quality listening. The consistency of these results varied across different dimensions of Kama Muta. This work offers novel insights into a previously unexplored social behavior that can act as an antecedent of Kama Muta and contributes to the listening literature, which has predominantly focused on the effects on speakers. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these findings.

Due to the central role friendships play in young adulthood, it is crucial to understand factors that help foster high-quality bonds. The present study examined associations between extrinsic emotion regulation motives and relationship quality in friendship dyads. A sample of 105 young adult dyads (N = 210; Mage = 19.5 years, SDage = 1.2 years) completed a survey assessing their motives for engaging in extrinsic emotion regulation with each other and the constructive and destructive behaviors in their friendship. Actor–partner interdependence models indicated motivation to help a friend regulate for prohedonic, relationship maintenance, or emotional similarity reasons predicted more constructive behaviors, whereas contrahedonic motives predicted more destructive behaviors. These effects held from the perspective of the regulator but not the target of the regulation, highlighting the value of dyadic approaches for future work.

Past research on the use of motivational voice (or motivational prosody) has found that the way we modulate acoustic cues when we speak can have profound effects on others. However, it is unclear whether the effects also hold for other forms of social communication, such as emotional tone of voice, and what role empathy plays. Across three experiments (two preregistered), we found very large effects indicating that listening to an angry vs. happy voice reduced positive affect in participants, lowered their self-esteem, and eroded their intention to disclose information. These effects were mediated by perceived effort to interact with the speaker, feelings of discomfort, and norm violation, which were higher for an angry voice than for a happy one. Importantly, the effects were, as predicted, stronger for participants scoring high in cognitive empathy and especially affective resonance: More empathic people reported even lower positive affect, self-esteem, and intention to disclose information after listening to the angry vs. happy sounding speaker. This suggests that empathic people are more strongly affected by the tone of voice, even if emotions are only conveyed through vocal tone, without face-to-face interaction. Our findings help to advance related research areas and have important implications for clinical and organizational settings.

Social power (control over valued resources and outcomes) has pervasive effects on how people think, feel, and behave. One important domain likely to be influenced by power is emotion regulation (how people manage their emotions). Extending a small literature on power and emotion regulation, the present research (data collected between 2017 and 2019) examined whether experimentally manipulated power roles (e.g., being a boss vs. an employee) influence the regulation of anger and sadness, and whether emotion appropriateness norms (concerns about the appropriateness of emotions in particular contexts) might explain these effects. Using a within-subjects design, an exploratory study (Study 1, N = 207) asked participants to imagine themselves in three different power roles (i.e., high, equal, and low power) in scenarios that elicited either anger or sadness. They were then asked how they would regulate (via suppression, acceptance, and reappraisal) their emotions. Across anger and sadness scenarios, participants reported more suppression, less acceptance, and more reappraisal when imagining themselves in the high- and low-power roles compared to the equal-power role. Preregistered Study 2 (N = 447) replicated Study 1s effects and indicated that emotion appropriateness norms partially statistically mediated the effects of power role. Last, preregistered Study 3 (N = 291) replicated Studies 1 and 2. Overall, the findings suggest that unequal compared to equal power roles lead to more regulation (both suppression and reappraisal) and less acceptance of anger and sadness, and that emotion appropriateness norms partially explain these effects. This research provides novel insights into how and why power affects regulation of negative emotions.

Intrinsic interpersonal emotion regulation (IER; the process of using others’ help to regulate one’s own emotions) is an important form of emotion regulation (ER) that has implications for everyday well-being. To further clarify how IER shapes well-being, we investigated how intrinsic IER predicts one’s subsequent affect and ER efforts among 215 adults, with and without major depressive disorder, a disorder characterized by ER deficits. Via 2 weeks of ecological momentary assessment, participants reported on their recent intrinsic IER experiences, including whether they engaged in intrinsic IER via social sharing and perceived IER outcomes (problem, relationship). They also reported on their current negative affect (NA), positive affect (PA), and ER strategy use, which occurred subsequent to IER exchanges. Data collection took place between 2017 and 2019. We conducted multilevel modeling to examine within-person associations between recent intrinsic IER and subsequent NA, PA, and ER strategy use. Overall, findings suggest that engagement in intrinsic IER is associated with subsequent affect and ER efforts. Intrinsic IER engagement predicted higher NA and lower PA, but feeling better about the problem shared following IER predicted lower NA and higher PA. Intrinsic IER engagement predicted one’s subsequent ER strategy use (i.e., use more social sharing and reappraisal; use less suppression). The findings generally did not vary by major depressive disorder status. Our work clarifies how intrinsic IER relates to emotion experience and regulation over time in naturalistic settings.

This study addresses the long-standing debate on whether the subcortical or cortical visual pathway underlies rapid transmission of threat-related information. Using a single-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation protocol to transiently disrupt V1/V2 function at various time points, we examined the necessity of early visual cortices at different phases of fear processing. Our results showed that early disruption of V1/V2 had no effect on fearful emotion recognition under conditions of limited visual accessibility (N = 28 adults), but significantly impaired fear recognition when visual accessibility was increased (N = 28 adults). Notably, the impairment occurred as early as 30 ms poststimulus onset and was specific to low spatial frequency information, in stark contrast to the impairment on nonaffective content of the stimuli. These findings suggest a dual-pathway system in the human brain that flexibly engages either the subcortical or cortical pathway, depending on the availability of threat information in the environment.

The frustration of relational needs is a common source of conflict in romantic relationships. Empathic accuracy (EA) defined as the ability to accurately perceive and understand a partner’s thoughts and feelings plays a key role in resolving these conflicts. In this study, we tested the hypothesis that need frustration and EA are associated both within individuals and between romantic partners during actual conflict interactions. Data were analyzed from a lab-based conflict interaction study conducted in 2014, which included a video-mediated recall task. Results from two cross-sectional actor–partner interdependence models revealed that women’s EA was positively associated with their male partner’s need frustration at the start of the conflict, but this association was no longer present by the end. Additionally, women’s EA was marginally negatively associated with their own need frustration at both the start and end of the conflict interaction. These findings highlight the complex and dynamic nature of the relationship of need frustration and EA during couples’ actual conflict interactions. Further research is needed to explore the underlying mechanisms driving these associations over time.

This research examines cardiovascular response to everyday threats and challenges during wakefulness and sleep. Approximately 11,000 people, who comprised a diverse sample ethnically but not socioeconomically, completed three weekly morning and evening surveys in which they indicated whether they expected and experienced threats and challenges that day. Participants also provided measures of blood pressure on morning surveys and provided measures of average heart rate during the day and resting heart rate when asleep via their WHOOP biometric capture device. Enrollment began in April 2024, and data collection ceased in July 2024. Results indicated that both threat and challenge were associated with higher blood pressure and higher average heart rate during the day. In contrast, when people were asleep, threat was associated with higher resting heart rate but challenge was associated with lower resting heart rate. These results suggest that the body achieves more restorative sleep in preparation for perceived challenges but not for perceived threats, raising the possibility that the greater stress associated with threats disrupts the body’s capacity for restorative sleep. The generalizability of these results to members of economically marginalized groups remains an open question.

People spend significant time at work talking with coworkers. Yet surprisingly little is known about how these conversations impact their emotional lives. We addressed this issue across two experience sampling studies performed in 2021 and 2023 with working adults in the United States (N = 358; 26,234 observations). Time-lagged models showed that sharing positive information and sharing information to connect predicted improved emotional well-being, work energy, and connection over time, while sharing negative information and sharing information to vent predicted reductions in emotional well-being and increases in rumination. Additionally, mismatches between sharing motivations and perceived responses from listeners occurred frequently (49.2% of the time) and predicted adverse outcomes. These findings highlight the need for future research to examine whether strategically sharing personal information at work optimizes well-being and productivity.

Difficulties in emotion regulation during adolescence have been linked to depression. Early identification of deficits in emotion regulation may help prevent the onset of depression. This study investigated whether emotion regulation dynamics, particularly the strength of regulation to one’s affective equilibrium (damping) inferred from the damped oscillator model, predicts future depressive symptoms in adolescents. We hypothesized that the relationship between damping and long-term outcomes would depend on the position of an individual’s equilibrium. From July 2019 to May 2024, participants (N = 115) aged 12–15 completed smartphone-based ecological momentary assessment for 30 days, rating six emotions four times daily. The damped oscillator model was applied to each participant’s time-series data, yielding person-specific frequency of oscillations (η) and damping (ζ) parameters. These parameters were then used to predict depressive symptoms at 6- and 12-month follow-ups controlling for baseline levels of depression. Results revealed that the interaction between the damping parameter and the equilibrium position significantly predicted depressive symptoms for sadness, but not for other emotions. For individuals with higher equilibrium levels of sadness, stronger damping predicted higher follow-up depressive symptoms. Additionally, higher frequency of oscillation around the equilibrium—representing greater elasticity and less rigidity—of two emotions (interest and happiness) predicted fewer depressive symptoms. These findings suggest that the adaptive value of rapid emotional recovery depends on one’s baseline emotional state. Tracking emotion regulation dynamics of both positive and negative emotions may improve our ability to identify adolescents at risk for depression before symptoms emerge, thereby informing targeted intervention and prevention efforts.

Emotion understanding and emotion regulation play important roles in children’s development, but we have only a limited understanding of how these constructs are socialized. Constructionist theories suggest that as children engage in interactions with caregivers, they learn to associate words naming emotion categories with conceptual representations of specific emotions, leading to greater emotion understanding. In this preregistered study, we posit emotion word knowledge as a key feature of emotion understanding. Using path analysis with a cross-sectional sample of 252 mainly low socioeconomic status children (aged 4–8 years) and their caregivers collected between 2018 and 2024, we examined indirect effects of implicit parental emotion socialization (difficulties with emotion regulation and emotional expressivity) on children’s emotion regulation through children’s emotion word knowledge. While parental difficulties with emotion regulation and expressivity were unrelated to children’s emotion word knowledge, child emotion word knowledge predicted parent reports of children’s adaptive emotion regulation. In addition, we observed an indirect effect of children’s verbal intelligence on adaptive emotion regulation through children’s emotion word knowledge. In contrast, we observed a direct effect of parental difficulties with emotion regulation on children’s dysregulation. These findings align with constructionist theories underscoring the importance of emotion word knowledge for the development of emotion regulation skills and begin to shine light on how family contexts might support children’s development of emotion word knowledge.

Although there is strong evidence for the role of emotion in climate change–mitigating behaviors (Brosch, 2021), little is known about the role of emotion regulation in climate action (Panno et al., 2015). Our studies (a correlational study and an experiment, conducted in 2022) investigated the role of emotion regulation in emotional responses to climate change and the likelihood of taking climate change–mitigating actions. In Study 1, 151 participants from the United States and Canada read about the detrimental effects of climate change before recording their emotional responses, emotion regulation strategies used in response to climate change information, and climate actions (proenvironmental behaviors and civic engagement in environmental actions). Some emotion regulation strategies predicted climate action, including when controlling for demographic variables. In Study 2, 245 participants from the United States watched a video on the negative consequences of climate change, rated their emotions, and were randomly assigned to distraction, worrying, or positive reappraisal in response to the video. Next, they were given the option to sign an environmental petition and donate money to an environmental organization before rating their intentions to engage in climate actions. Distraction reduced negative emotion, and positive reappraisal increased hope. The effects of emotion regulation on engagement in climate action were mixed. Exploratory mediation analyses indicated that worrying and reappraisal increased intentions to engage in climate action via negative emotion. Further experimental research on the effects of emotion regulation on climate action will be important for informing communications about climate change to protect mental health while motivating action.

Emotions do not simply turn on and off again in an instant; rather, emotions rise and fall gradually, often persisting for a considerable period. Although it is normative for emotions to show a degree of momentum—a phenomenon known as emotional inertia—the tendency for emotions to be overly persistent has been associated with psychological maladjustment. However, the mechanisms underlying emotional inertia remain unclear. We aimed to fill this gap in the present study by investigating how the persistence of affect over time (emotional inertia) is mediated—at the within-person level—by the use of emotion-regulation strategies in daily life. We ran secondary analyses on eight experience sampling data sets collected between 2009 and 2021 (total N = 948 participants measured at 73,472 occasions), in which participants reported their momentary experiences of positive affect and negative affect and their recent use of four emotion-regulation strategies (distraction, cognitive reappraisal, rumination, and expressive suppression). We used dynamic structural equation modeling to estimate indirect effects of each strategy on the inertia of positive affect and negative affect. All four strategies reliably mediated both negative affect inertia and (to a lesser extent) positive affect inertia, supporting the notion that the use of emotion-regulation strategies represents a mechanism underpinning emotional inertia, at least among highly educated, nonclinical, Australian and Belgian young adults. However, each regulation strategy reduced the total autoregressive slope of affect at t − 1 predicting affect at t by no more than 13%, suggesting factors other than emotion-regulation strategies also play important roles in emotional inertia.

Are anxious individuals aware that their attention is excessively captured by threat-related stimuli? If so, how accurate is this awareness? Accurate attentional monitoring is crucial for effective attentional control, as it enables individuals to recognize whether and to what extent attentional control is necessary. The present study investigates how accurately individuals (recruited in 2023–2024) monitor their attentional bias toward an angry face and whether this ability is associated with anxiety levels. Adopting a novel approach that involves average facial expression and attentional allocation judgments, we demonstrate that individuals can monitor their attentional bias toward an angry face. However, anxious individuals tend to underestimate their greater attentional bias, despite having an intact ability to monitor trial-by-trial variations in attentional bias; this may explain why they exhibit impaired attentional control. This study provides a novel theoretical framework that incorporates attentional monitoring processes to more comprehensively understand the relationship between attention and anxiety.

The success of regulation attempts is highly context-specific, with factors that vary within people and across contexts such as emotional clarity and beliefs about emotion impacting the likelihood that strategies will lead to success. Regulation goal clarity, or how clear people are about their goals for regulating, may be a contextual factor that facilitates the selection of appropriate strategies to promote more successful regulation. The present study examined whether regulation goal clarity may enhance the likelihood that implementing strategies results in successful regulation in daily life. We hypothesized that regulation goal clarity will moderate the relation between use of regulation strategies and success such that greater goal clarity would strengthen the strategy–success link. A sample of 130 undergraduates completed a 14-day daily diary protocol during which they reported a major stressor, the use and helpfulness of strategies, and the clarity of their goals. Results revealed that goal clarity moderated the relationship between the use of problem-focused strategies and regulation success, such that higher strategy use was associated with greater regulation success at higher levels of goal clarity. No significant effects emerged with goal clarity as a moderator for the emotion-focused strategies–success link. It may be that problem-focused strategies are associated with greater action orientation, for which clarity is beneficial in guiding goal pursuit. Future work should continue to investigate the role of goal clarity in regulation, given that it is a goal-directed process.

Co-rumination—defined as when individuals perseverate on problems with each other, focus excessively on negative feelings, and cyclically discuss the causes and consequences of problems—is often examined from the perspective of the person seeking support or by assigning one rating of co-rumination to a dyad. This approach muddles how each person contributes to the “co” of co-rumination and may have implications for understanding prior work that has shown associations between co-rumination and intrapersonal and interpersonal well-being. We leveraged state space grids to examine co-rumination as a dyadic and dynamic system, as constituted by the temporal unfolding of each dyad member’s self-rated social rumination throughout their discussion. From 2019 to 2020, 85 primarily White and female college-aged close friend dyads engaged in a support discussion. After, friends viewed their recorded discussion and rated their individual contributions to the co-rumination process (i.e., social rumination) every 30 s across the 8 min conversation. Results revealed that the more both dyad members got “stuck” engaging in mutually high social rumination (i.e., co-rumination), the more they perceived each other as responsive, viewed the problem as more solved, and disclosers viewed responders as more supportive. In contrast, when only the person disclosing the problem was stuck in high levels of social rumination, only disclosers rated the problem as more solved, indicating fewer overall benefits. Examining co-rumination dyadically and dynamically can reveal when and for whom co-rumination processes are associated with costs and benefits.

This research examined the effect of peripheral information on emotional responses and depression-related differences in this effect. In two experiments, undergraduate students, representing a subclinical sample with varying levels of depression, rated their emotional responses to neutral and negative target pictures. The target pictures were presented alone or with negative and neutral peripheral pictures (Study 1), or with negative and positive pictures (Study 2). As predicted, across studies, depressive symptoms were associated with more negative emotional responses to neutral pictures when these were presented in the context of peripheral negative pictures as compared to neutral or positive peripheral pictures. Contrary to predictions, positive peripheral pictures did not attenuate responses to negative target pictures, and depression did not moderate the effect of positive information on emotional responses. These results highlight the potential impact of contextual negative peripheral information on the emotional responses of individuals with depressive symptoms and suggest avenues for exploring interventions aimed at modifying negative affective responses.

The discrete emotion theory of affective aging posits that the adaptive effects of emotions vary depending on their ability to facilitate effective responses to developmental constraints and opportunities. Research suggests that calmness and excitement are two positive emotions with distinct functions and that calmness, but not excitement, supports effective adjustment to developmental constraints in old age, particularly when control perceptions are low. In the present research, we conducted a 1-week daily diary study with 169 community-dwelling older adults (Mage = 76.6, SD = 7.2). Data were collected in 2018. We examined the effects of calmness and excitement intensity (between- and within-person differences) and variability within the context of stressful experiences on older adults’ well-being and health. We expected that levels, increases, and consistency (i.e., low variability) of calmness, but not excitement, may be adaptive, particularly among older adults with low control perceptions. Results from hierarchical and linear regression models showed that calmness intensity was associated with better well-being and health, on both the between- and within-person levels. Between-person levels of excitement intensity, by contrast, predicted poorer health and depressive symptoms among individuals with low perceived control. Compared to variable calmness, consistent calmness was associated with adaptive outcomes, particularly for older adults with low perceived control. By contrast, excitement variability was largely unrelated to well-being and health, except for a positive association with depressive symptoms among adults with low control. Findings inform functional theories of emotion by suggesting that positive emotions with disparate motivational functions can exert diverging effects in older adulthood.

Rumination, characterized by repetitive and intrusive thoughts about negative personal events, has been linked to a narrow attentional scope. Conversely, emotional acceptance, which involves fully experiencing emotions in a nonevaluative way, is theorized to broaden attention. However, empirical data that support the theoretical link between rumination, acceptance, and the attentional scope are scarce. The present study examined the effects of rumination and acceptance on local (narrow attention) versus global (broad attention) processing styles. Seventy-two healthy participants were asked to describe a distressing personal event. Then, participants implemented rumination or acceptance to cope with that event. Before and after the implementation phase, participants completed a global/local processing task. The results showed that rumination led to a pre- to postmanipulation increase in local interference (i.e., greater interference caused by details when attending to a whole figure) and a decrease in global interference (i.e., smaller interference caused by a whole figure while attending to the details). In contrast, implementing emotional acceptance led to a pre- to postmanipulation reduction in local interference, with no change in global interference. Post hoc analyses indicated that the effects of rumination and acceptance on processing style were not mediated by affective changes that resulted from implementing these strategies. The findings provide support for the role played by rumination in narrowing the attentional scope and partial support for the effect of acceptance on broadening attention.

Emotions dynamically unfold and are jointly constructed throughout social interactions between individuals. Yet, how exactly the experience and expression of emotions interact throughout such interactions remains poorly understood. In this study, we investigated the interplay between the experience and verbal expression of negative affect within and between romantic partners during negative interactions. We examined this interplay in terms of four possible relations: (a) how one’s experienced negative affect predicts the verbal expression thereof, (b) how the verbal expression of negative affect predicts a subsequent change in one’s own experienced affect, (c) how the verbal expression of negative affect predicts change in a partner’s experienced affect, and (d) how one’s experienced negative affect predicts the verbal expression of negative affect by a partner. We answered these questions by analyzing second-to-second data of self-reported affect ratings and verbatim transcripts of videotaped negative interactions between romantic partners. Our findings reveal inconsistent evidence for intraindividual relationships between the experience and verbal expression of negative affect. Yet, they demonstrate a consistent, though small, interpersonal relation with the expression of negative affect in one partner predicting the subsequent experience of negative affect in the other. These results suggest that verbal negative emotion expression may be more consistently related to others’ experience than one’s own, and highlight the role of emotion expression in interpersonal emotion regulation and the social construction of emotional experience, though the small effect sizes suggest this relationship may be subtle and that many other factors contribute to our emotional experiences.

Primal world beliefs—beliefs about the general character of the world—are linked to psychological well-being, yet little is known about what drives changes in these beliefs. This study examined whether daily relatedness—rewarding, intimate, and responsive social interactions—predicts shifts in primal world beliefs over a year. In a dyadic study of romantic couples (N = 235 couples and 6,411 daily observations), daily relatedness predicted more positive world beliefs 1 year later. Specifically, positive interactions with close ties (i.e., familiar and close interaction partners), romantic relationship satisfaction, and perceived partner responsiveness contributed to these shifts. However, the quality of interactions with weak ties (i.e., unfamiliar or distant partners) did not predict changes in world beliefs. Moreover, positive changes in world beliefs partially explained the prospective effects of daily relatedness on greater well-being and lower depressed affect over the year. These findings provide novel support for retrospective models of world belief change, highlighting the role of everyday interpersonal experiences in shaping fundamental views of the world. They also suggest that more positive world beliefs may partially explain why relatedness promotes well-being.

Numerous studies have highlighted the beneficial effect of humor on memory in younger adults. While older adults are known to preferentially process positive information and appreciate humor, no study has investigated whether the effect of humor on memory persists in aging. Two studies were conducted to address this gap. In Study 1, 19 younger adults and 20 older adults performed a memory task designed to compare the recall of humorous and neutral photograph sequences. Results revealed the typical beneficial effect of humor on free recall in young adults, while in older adults, humor had no influence on free recall and even a detrimental effect in the cued recall task, suggesting that humor primarily affects encoding processes. Study 2 aimed to replicate these findings and further investigate the mechanisms underlying this negative effect in older adults (i.e., the effect of humor per se or confounding incongruity effect). To this end, 37 younger adults and 38 older adults completed a similar task, now featuring three different photograph sequences (humorous, incongruous and neutral). Older adults exhibited no further effect of humor on memory when incongruity was controlled, whereas younger adults continued to recall humorous photographs better than neutral ones, in the two retrieval conditions. As expected, older adults also showed a negative effect of incongruity on memory, consistent with the inefficiency of their binding processes. Taken together, these studies show that the positive effect of humor on memory disappears in aging, owing to the inherent incongruity of humorous stimuli, combined with an associative memory deficit.

Using a large-scale public-sample ecological momentary assessment study (N = 710) collected across 7 days in 2020 and providing 29,820 observations, the present work examines associations between moment-to-moment and day-to-day experiences of mixed emotions with well-being among American adults and whether these relationships would be moderated by stressful situations or adverse life events. Multilevel lagged analyses adjusting for positive emotions, negative emotions, neuroticism, and demographic variability found that mixed emotions were not associated with next-moment physical well-being or next-day social well-being, but were associated with poorer next-day physical health. Reverse pathways in which physical well-being and social well-being on each day predicted reduced mixed emotions on subsequent days were also supported, though the comparable pathway at the moment level was not significant. Moderation analyses further found that whereas adverse life events reported in the previous month did not moderate the associations of mixed emotions with well-being, there were significant interaction terms between moment-level mixed emotions with stressful events reported at the moment predicting next-moment well-being, as well as between day-level mixed emotions with stressful events reported that day predicting next-day physical health. Simple slope analyses found that mixed emotions were associated with poorer next-moment physical well-being and next-day physical health only when stressful events were not reported. We discuss the implications of these findings for conceptualizations of mixed emotions and the potential role of stress as a contextual factor that may alter how mixed emotions are linked to downstream outcomes.

Theories of empathy highlight the importance of affective congruence, which is the degree to which we match an interaction partner in negative or positive affect. However, no research to date has used a multipronged assessment approach necessary to investigate whether and how affective congruence typically relates to empathy (i.e., perception of others’ affect, self-reported affect, and self-reported empathy during interpersonal interactions). Using multilevel response surface analysis and ecological momentary assessment, we investigated relations between congruence of perceived affect and self-reported empathy during social interactions in a large sample of adults (N = 526; total interactions = 21,521; Mdn = 38 interactions per person). Data were collected in spring 2023. We found that while self-reported empathy is generally higher when there is congruence of perceived affect, empathy is highest when there is congruence in high positive affect. Further, people are least empathetic when they feel emotionally worse than they perceive the other person is feeling. These findings provide novel insights into the empathic processes.