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Emotion Differentiation as Resilience Against Excessive Alcohol Use: An Ecological Momentary Assessment in Underage Social Drinkers
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Some people are adept at using discrete emotion categories (anxious, angry, sad) to capture their felt experience; other people merely communicate how good or bad they feel. We theorized that people who are better at describing their emotions might be less likely to self-medicate with alcohol. During a 3-week period, 106 underage social drinkers used handheld computers to self-monitor alcohol intake. From participants' reported experiences during random prompts, we created an individual difference measure of emotion differentiation. Results from a 30-day timeline follow-back revealed that people with intense negative emotions consumed less alcohol if they were better at describing emotions and less reliant on global descriptions. Results from ecological momentary assessment procedures revealed that people with intense negative emotions prior to drinking episodes consumed less alcohol if they were better at describing emotions. These findings provide support for a novel methodology and dimension for understanding the influence of emotions on substance-use patterns.
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... Negative emotion differentiation (NED) is particularly important as it has been consistently associated with mental health, whereas mixed evidence has been found for positive emotion differentiation (PED; Kashdan et al., 2015;Thompson, Springstein, et al., 2021). Specifically, NED has been linked to a decreased risk of maladaptive behaviours such as binge eating (Mikhail et al., 2020), excessive drinking (Kashdan et al., 2010), aggressive tendencies (Pond et al., 2012), and non-suicidal self-injury . ...
... Researchers found that compared to those with low NED, individuals with high NED were less likely to engage in maladaptive behaviours (e.g. alcohol intake, aggressive tendencies) only after experiencing intense negative emotions (Kashdan et al., 2010;Pond et al., 2012). Building on previous evidence, the current study explored the role of NED on ER use pertaining to people's most negative daily events and we hypothesise that the NED-ER relationship would be strongest in this case. ...
Emotion differentiation emphasises labelling emotional experiences in a precise and context-sensitive way. Negative emotion differentiation (NED) has been found to be associated with mental health, where emotion regulation (ER) may act as a pathway. The current study aims to explore the association between NED and flexible ER implementation in daily life. Specifically, we examined how NED was associated with two aspects of ER flexibility: contextual synchrony and temporal ER variability. 101 college students (54% female; Mage = 20.24 years) reported their momentary emotions via a 7-day experience sampling protocol, and the intraclass correlation coefficients were calculated to reflect NED. In 10-day daily diaries, they also reported information about the most negative event during the day (i.e. event type, event intensity and ER goal) and how they regulated their emotions. The results revealed that individuals with high NED showed higher levels of synchrony between change in ER use and change in event type and ER goal. In addition, NED was positively associated with both within- and between-strategy variability in ER use. The results demonstrated that the ability to differentiate between negative emotions was related to higher ER flexibility, which shed new light on understanding the role of emotion differentiation in well-being.
... This approach to assessing granularity was previously used by Lee et al. (2017), who found that granularity scores derived from this day reconstruction task predicted EEG activity during affective picture viewing. In addition to predicting how affective stimuli are processed, the validity of granularity as computed based on the intercorrelation of on-line ratings of emotional experience has been extensively demonstrated through its association with affective outcomes including well-being Nook, 2021;O'Toole et al., 2014;Ottenstein, 2020;Starr et al., 2017), emotion regulation (Barrett et al., 2001;Brown et al., 2021;Hay & Diehl, 2011;Jones & Herr, 2018;Kalokerinos et al., 2019;O'Toole et al., 2014;Ottenstein, 2020), substance use behavior (Anand et al., 2017;Kashdan et al., 2010), and disordered eating (Jones & Herr, 2018;Mikhail et al., 2020). The procedures for computing granularity based on participants' emotion ratings are described in the Data Analysis section. ...
... ICCs were computed using the icc function from the irr R package (Gamer et al., 2019). In line with prior research, ICCs were computed based on absolute agreement (Anand et al., 2017;Boden et al., 2013;Kashdan et al., 2010;Mikhail et al., 2020;Tugade et al., 2004), meaning that differences in the magnitude of ratings between different emotions are taken into account when computing ICCs (Shrout & Fleiss, 1979). ...
Psychological constructionist theories of emotion posit that individuals differ in their representation of emotions due to differences in the emotion knowledge they use during emotion construction. As a result, individuals are thought to differ in the extent to which they experience their emotions as being differentiated and distinct, a construct referred to as emotional granularity. Recently, it has been suggested that granularity may be a form of emotional expertise in so far as highly granular individuals possess structured knowledge about emotions which guides processes such as affective prediction and action (Hoemann et al., 2021). Even so, many of the predictions that follow from this characterization have yet to be tested. In the current study, I tested one such prediction that follows from the characterization of granularity as a form of emotional expertise: that highly granular individuals would demonstrate expertise-like effects for emotional memory. In particular, because prior research suggests that experts exhibit increased true and (under certain conditions) false memory for domain-relevant information, I predicted that highly granular individuals would show increased true and false emotional memory. Participants completed experience-sampling measures of their emotional experiences to assess granularity, behavioral tasks assessing true and false emotional memory, and several self-report measures of additional constructs thought to reflect emotional expertise. Contrary to predictions, overall granularity was unrelated to both true and false emotional memory. However, expertise-like effects were observed for negative granularity, alexithymia, and emotional clarity, as participants with higher levels of emotional expertise on these measures exhibited increased memory for images rated as being of a more extreme valence. Implications of these findings regarding the characterization of granularity as an expertise construct as well as directions for future research related to emotional expertise and memory are discussed.
... Par conséquent, de tels individus font preuve de plus d'adaptation, de moins d'anxiété et d'une meilleure santé mentale 20,23,29,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,42,43,44 . Entre autres, les personnes avec de hauts niveaux de granularité ont moins tendance à s'adonner à des comportements inadaptés comme la consommation excessive d'alcool et de nourriture 45,46 , l'utilisation de drogues 47 ou l'agressivité 15 . ...
... Cu cât este mai nuanțat vocabularul uman, cu atât mai precis reușește creierul prin predicțiile sale să calibreze bugetul corporal în funcție de nevoile sale reale. Tinerii capabili să emită predicții și să construiască ipostaze ale emoțiilor potrivite fiecărei situații sunt mai flexibili în reglarea propriilor emoții (Barrett et al., 2001), mai puțin predispuși la consumul excesiv de alcool când parcurg o perioadă stresantă (Kashdan et al., 2010), mai puțin agresivi față de cei care le fac rău (Pond et al., 2012) și mai capabili să aleagă acțiunea corectă în situații sociale (Kimhy et al., 2014). Cei mai puțin abili în a discerne emoțiile neplăcute tind să experimenteze mai multă anxietate și stări depresive (Erbas et al., 2014;Mennin et al., 2005). ...
Acest volum colectiv abordează problematica adaptării din mai multe perspective, pornind de la teoriile și modelele explicative și particularizând-o la diversitatea populațiilor actuale de studenți (studenți internaționali, studenți cu dificultăți de învățare sau studenți non-tradiționali) și la contextul mai amplu al digitalizării în educație.
https://www.edituratrei.ro/.../adaptarea-academica.../13559/
Introduction: Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a mental health condition characterized by instability in mood and interpersonal relationships. These patients are on the border between neurosis and psychosis. Aim: This study aimed to investigate the role of Behavioral Inhibition Systems/Behavioral Activation Systems in self-destructive behaviors in female vocational school students with BPD according to the mediating role of emotional dysregulation. Method: The research had a descriptive-correlational method, and its statistical population consisted of all female students with BPD at technical and vocational schools in an educational district of Tehran. 176 students were selected using the purposive sampling method. Data collection tool included Jackson and Claridge's Borderline Personality Disorder Scale (1991), Behavioral Inhibition System/Behavioral Activation System Questionnaire by Carver and White (1994), Self-Destructive Behaviors Questionnaire by Sansone et al. (1998), and Difficulties in emotion regulation scale by Gratz and Roemer (2004). Data were analyzed using the PLS-SEM method with SmartPLS software. Results: The indirect effect of BIS/BAS on self-destructive behaviors with a mediating role of emotional dysregulation was -0.553 and significant (p<0.05). The direct effect of BIS/BAS on emotional dysregulation was -0.436 and significant (p< 0.05). Furthermore, the direct effect of BIS/BAS on self-destructive behaviors was -0.504 and significant (p<0.05), and the direct effect of emotional dysregulation on self-destructive behaviors was 0.506 and significant (p<0.05). Conclusion: There was a significant relationship between behavioral activation and inhibition systems with self-destructive behaviors according to a mediating role of emotional dysregulation.
A number of contemporary researchers have proposed considering happiness and joy as distinct phenomena and theoretical constructs. However, there is as yet insufficient information regarding whether the theoretical and empirical arguments for distinguishing happiness from joy also apply to folk representations of these concepts. This work presents two studies in which Italian speakers performed a free-listing task asking them to list words semantically equivalent to the Italian words felicità (happiness) (Study 1) and gioia (joy) (Study 2). A comparison between the two studies revealed that the Italian concepts of happiness and joy had 49 lexical items in common, 32 of which related to emotions. Interestingly, 11 of the latter ranked in the top 10 cognitive salience indexes obtained from both Study 1 and Study 2. It is argued that the semantic similarities between the two words examined – felicità and gioia – should not overshadow the meaning nuances distinguishing them.
p style="text-align: justify;">The article reviews of a number of modern foreign studies of emotion differentiation and its role in emotion regulation processes. An attempt is made to generalise the currently existing results on the connection of emotional differentiation with various personality and behavioural constructs, as well as about its role of in psychological well-being. The main advantages of high negative emotional differentiation and disadvantages of low negative emotional differentiation are identified. Trait and momentary emotional differentiation was distinguished, difficulties in conceptualising and measuring the momentary emotional differentiation were outlined, the lines of future studies of the relationship between both measures of emotional differentiation and emotion regulation were described. Several studies of the role of emotional differentiation in the choice and effectiveness of putatively adaptive and maladaptive emotion regulation strategies were analysed. It was found that higher levels of negative emotional differentiation were related to the effectiveness of emotion regulation strategies rather than to their choice. Similarities and differences in the methodology and obtained results of the analysed studies are identified. Issues requiring further research are formulated, prospects for future research are described. The practical significance of the research findings for the use in psychotherapy and treatment of psychological disorders is outlined.</p
signed
to help people become more aware
of their own emotions, facilitating emotional
self-regulation processes in their daily lives. The
app was evaluated in a study with 16 participants.
They used the app five times a day for
two weeks. The aim was to improve emotional
management, emotional granularity and perception
of emotional intensity. A mixed methods
design was used, combining qualitative and
quantitative approaches. Results indicated progressive
improvements in self-awareness and
emotional management, as well as in emotional
granularity, by achieving app-based labelling of
emotions in a more specific way. Differences in
emotional expression were observed between
native and second languages, as well as in the
frequency of use of emotions related to arousal
and/or pleasure due to cultural and/or gender
nuances. Although the results suggest the efficacy
of the app, a larger sample size is required
to confirm them. This study highlights the importance
of accessible tools in psychology and
education to benefit more people
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.
In 3 studies (Ns = 250, 83, 236), an examination of differences in how individuals experience their emotions (meta-emotion traits of clarity, attention, and intensity) led to the identification of 4 distinct types (overwhelmed, hot, cerebral, and cool). When mood was manipulated, the types differed in how they initially reacted to the emotional situation, how they regulated their mood, and how they made judgments. In particular, one type of individual (the hot type) was more reactive to emotional situations than the others. Another type of individual (the overwhelmed type) regulated mood differently than the others, which led these individuals to make judgments that were also different. Overwhelmed individuals appeared unable or unwilling to avail themselves of critical affective information.
For decades, coping researchers have used between-person designs to address inherently within-person questions derived from theory and clinical practice. The authors describe recent developments in the use of within-person, process-oriented methods that examine individuals intensively over time. Ongoing studies of stress and alcohol consumption, the effects of depression on adaptational processes, and the temporal dynamics of coping with chronic pain demonstrate that by tracking rapidly fluctuating processes such as mood and coping close to their real-time occurrence, daily process designs offer unique insights into conceptually and clinically challenging questions. Such designs also provide new opportunities to examine the purported mechanisms of therapeutic interventions. Despite its demands on participants and investigators, daily process research offers fresh opportunities to link psychological theory, research, and practice.
This study investigated 3 broad classes of individual-differences variables (job-search motives, competencies, and constraints) as predictors of job-search intensity among 292 unemployed job seekers. Also assessed was the relationship between job-search intensity and reemployment success in a longitudinal context. Results show significant relationships between the predictors employment commitment, financial hardship, job-search self-efficacy, and motivation control and the outcome job-search intensity. Support was not found for a relationship between perceived job-search constraints and job-search intensity. Motivation control was highlighted as the only lagged predictor of job-search intensity over time for those who were continuously unemployed. Job-search intensity predicted Time 2 reemployment status for the sample as a whole, but not reemployment quality for those who found jobs over the study's duration. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Individuals differ considerably in their emotion experience. Some experience emotions in a highly differentiated manner, clearly distinguishing among a variety of negative and positive discrete emotions. Others experience emotions in a relatively undifferentiated manner, treating a range of like-valence terms as interchangeable. Drawing on self-regulation theory, we hypothesised that indivi-duals with highly differentiated emotion experience should be better able to regulate emotions than individuals with poorly differentiated emotion experience. In particular, we hypothesised that emotion differentiation and emotion regulation would be positively related in the context of intense negative emotions, where the press for emotion regulation is generally greatest. To test this hypothesis, parti-cipants' negative and positive emotion differentiation was assessed using a 14-day diary protocol. Participants' regulation of negative and positive emotions was assessed using laboratory measures. As predicted, negative emotion differentiation was positively related to the frequency of negative emotion regulation, particularly at higher levels of emotional intensity.
The set of techniques known collectively as real-time data capture (RTDC) is becoming increasingly important in medical research. Based on the collection of data in people's typical environments, RTDC is primarily used with self-reported data, such as medical symptoms and psychological states. Now, its guiding principles and supporting technologies also provide a framework for scientists to monitor physiological information such as heart rate, blood pressure, and skin conductance. This volume gives the most complete view yet of the state of RTDC science and its potential for use across the health and behavioural sciences.
Foreword James S. Grotstein Acknowledgements Introduction Graeme Taylor 1. The development and regulation of affects Graeme Taylor, Michael Bagby and James Parker 2. Affect dysregulation and alexithymia Michael Bagby and Graeme Taylor 3. Measurement and validation of the alexithymia construct Michael Bagby and Graeme Taylor 4. Relations between alexithymia, personality, and affects James Parker and Graeme Taylor 5. The neurobiology of emotion, affect regulation and alexithymia James Parker and Graeme Taylor 6. Somatoform disorders Graeme Taylor 7. Anxiety and depressive disorders and a note on personality disorders Michael Bagby and Graeme Taylor 8. Substance use disorders Graeme Taylor 9. Eating disorders Graeme Taylor 10. Affects and alexithymia in medical illness and disease Graeme Taylor 11. Treatment considerations Graeme Taylor 12. Future directions James Parker, Michael Bagby and Graeme Taylor References Index.
An intelligence must meet several standard criteria before it can be considered scientifically legitimate. First, it should be capable of being operationalized as a set of abilities. Second, it should meet certain correlational criteria: the abilities defined by the intelligence should form a related set (i.e., be intercorrelated), and be related to pre-existing intelligences, while also showing some unique variance. Third, the abilities of the intelligence should develop with age and experience. In two studies, adults (N=503) and adolescents (N=229) took a new, 12-subscale ability test of emotional intelligence: the Multifactor Emotional Intelligence Scale (MEIS). The present studies show that emotional intelligence, as measured by the MEIS, meets the above three classical criteria of a standard intelligence.
Research from numerous corners of psychological inquiry suggests that self-assessments of skill and character are often flawed in substantive and systematic ways. We review empirical findings on the imperfect nature of self-assessment and discuss implications for three real-world domains: health, education, and the workplace.
In general, people's self-views hold only a tenuous to modest relationship with their actual behavior and performance. The correlation between self-ratings of skill and actual performance in many domains is moderate to meager—indeed, at times, other people's predictions of a person's outcomes prove more accurate than that person's self-predictions. In addition, people overrate themselves. On average, people say that they are “above average” in skill (a conclusion that defies statistical possibility), overestimate the likelihood that they will engage in desirable behaviors and achieve favorable outcomes, furnish overly optimistic estimates of when they will complete future projects, and reach judgments with too much confidence. Several psychological processes conspire to produce flawed self-assessments.
Research focusing on health echoes these findings. People are unrealistically optimistic about their own health risks compared with those of other people. They also overestimate how distinctive their opinions and preferences (e.g., discomfort with alcohol) are among their peers—a misperception that can have a deleterious impact on their health. Unable to anticipate how they would respond to emotion-laden situations, they mispredict the preferences of patients when asked to step in and make treatment decisions for them. Guided by mistaken but seemingly plausible theories of health and disease, people misdiagnose themselves—a phenomenon that can have severe consequences for their health and longevity.
Similarly, research in education finds that students' assessments of their performance tend to agree only moderately with those of their teachers and mentors. Students seem largely unable to assess how well or poorly they have comprehended material they have just read. They also tend to be overconfident in newly learned skills, at times because the common educational practice of massed training appears to promote rapid acquisition of skill—as well as self-confidence—but not necessarily the retention of skill. Several interventions, however, can be introduced to prompt students to evaluate their skill and learning more accurately.
In the workplace, flawed self-assessments arise all the way up the corporate ladder. Employees tend to overestimate their skill, making it difficult to give meaningful feedback. CEOs also display overconfidence in their judgments, particularly when stepping into new markets or novel projects—for example, proposing acquisitions that hurt, rather then help, the price of their company's stock. We discuss several interventions aimed at circumventing the consequences of such flawed assessments; these include training people to routinely make cognitive repairs correcting for biased self-assessments and requiring people to justify their decisions in front of their peers.
The act of self-assessment is an intrinsically difficult task, and we enumerate several obstacles that prevent people from reaching truthful self-impressions. We also propose that researchers and practitioners should recognize self-assessment as a coherent and unified area of study spanning many subdisciplines of psychology and beyond. Finally, we suggest that policymakers and other people who makes real-world assessments should be wary of self-assessments of skill, expertise, and knowledge, and should consider ways of repairing self-assessments that may be flawed.
In contrast to logical criteria of rationality, which can be assessed entirely by reference to the system of preferences, substantive criteria of rational choice refer to an independent evaluation of the outcomes of decisions. One of these substantive criteria is the experienced hedonic utility of outcomes. Research indicates that people are myopic in their decisions, may lack skill in predicting their future tastes, and can be led to erroneous choices by fallible memory and incorrect evaluation of past experiences. Theoretical and practical implications of these challenges to the assumption of economic rationality are discussed.