scholarly journals The Nonlinear Development of Emotion Differentiation: Granular Emotional Experience Is Low in Adolescence

2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (8) ◽  
pp. 1346-1357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik C. Nook ◽  
Stephanie F. Sasse ◽  
Hilary K. Lambert ◽  
Katie A. McLaughlin ◽  
Leah H. Somerville
Keyword(s):  
Negative Emotion ◽  
Emotional Experience ◽  
Developmental Trajectory ◽  
Developmental Trend ◽  
Emotional Experiences ◽  
Emotion Differentiation ◽  
Mediation Analyses ◽  
Intraclass Correlations ◽  
Laboratory Measure ◽  
Affective Experiences

People differ in how specifically they separate affective experiences into different emotion types—a skill called emotion differentiation or emotional granularity. Although increased emotion differentiation has been associated with positive mental health outcomes, little is known about its development. Participants ( N = 143) between the ages of 5 and 25 years completed a laboratory measure of negative emotion differentiation in which they rated how much a series of aversive images made them feel angry, disgusted, sad, scared, and upset. Emotion-differentiation scores were computed using intraclass correlations. Emotion differentiation followed a nonlinear developmental trajectory: It fell from childhood to adolescence and rose from adolescence to adulthood. Mediation analyses suggested that an increased tendency to report feeling emotions one at a time explained elevated emotion differentiation in childhood. Importantly, two other mediators (intensity of emotional experiences and scale use) did not explain this developmental trend. Hence, low emotion differentiation in adolescence may arise because adolescents have little experience conceptualizing co-occurring emotions.

Measuring Negative Emotion Differentiation Via Coded Descriptions of Emotional Experience

Assessment ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 107319112110039
Author(s):  
Gregory E. Williams ◽  
Amanda A. Uliaszek
Keyword(s):  
Symptom Severity ◽  
Negative Emotion ◽  
Emotional Experience ◽  
Emotional Experiences ◽  
Adaptive Function ◽  
Emotion Differentiation ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Psychopathological Symptom ◽  
Written Descriptions ◽  
High Degree

Emotion differentiation (ED) has been defined in terms of two abilities: (a) making fine-grained distinctions between emotional experiences, and (b) describing individual emotional experiences with a high degree of nuance and specificity. Research to date has almost exclusively focused on the former, with little attention paid to the latter. The current study sought to address this discrepant focus by testing two novel measures of negative ED (i.e., based on negatively valenced emotions only) via coded open-ended descriptions of individual emotional experiences, both past and present. As part of a larger study, 307 participants completed written descriptions of two negative emotional experiences, as well as a measure of emotion regulation difficulties and indices of psychopathological symptom severity. Negative ED ability, as measured via consistency between emotional experiences, was found to be unrelated to negative ED ability exhibited via coding of language within experiences. Within-experience negative ED may offer an incrementally adaptive function to that of ED between emotional experiences. Implications for ED theory are discussed.

scholarly journals Differences in Affective Dynamics Among Eating-Disorder Diagnostic Groups

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (5) ◽  
pp. 857-871
Author(s):  
Gail A. Williams-Kerver ◽  
Stephen A. Wonderlich ◽  
Ross D. Crosby ◽  
Li Cao ◽  
Kathryn E. Smith ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Eating Disorder ◽  
Ecological Momentary Assessment ◽  
Mixed Models ◽  
Emotional Experience ◽  
Affect Intensity ◽  
Emotion Differentiation ◽  
Affective Experiences ◽  
Ecological Momentary ◽  
Ema Data ◽  
Momentary Assessment

Emotion-regulation theories suggest that affect intensity is crucial in the development and maintenance of eating disorders. However, other aspects of emotional experience, such as lability, differentiation, and inertia, are not as well understood. This study is the first to use ecological momentary assessment (EMA) to examine differences in several daily negative affect (NA) indicators among adults diagnosed with anorexia nervosa (AN), bulimia nervosa (BN), or binge-eating disorder (BED). We used EMA data from three large studies to run a series of linear mixed models; the results showed that participants in the AN and BN groups experienced significantly greater NA intensity and better emotion differentiation than participants in the BED group. Alternatively, the BN group demonstrated significantly greater NA lability than the AN group and greater NA inertia than the BED group. These results suggest that several daily affective experiences differ among eating-disorder diagnostic groups and have implications toward distinct conceptualizations and treatments.

Knowing me, knowing you: Emotion differentiation in oneself is associated with recognition of others’ emotions

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacob Israelashvlili
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Emotion Recognition ◽  
Facial Expressions ◽  
Interpersonal Skills ◽  
Negative Emotion ◽  
Emotional Experience ◽  
Emotional Expressions ◽  
Emotional Facial Expressions ◽  
Emotional Information ◽  
Emotion Differentiation

Previous research has found that individuals vary greatly in emotion differentiation, that is, the extent to which they distinguish between different emotions when reporting on their own feelings. Building on previous work that has shown that emotion differentiation is associated with individual differences in intrapersonal functions, the current study asks whether emotion differentiation is also related to interpersonal skills. Specifically, we examined whether individuals who are high in emotion differentiation would be more accurate in recognizing others’ emotional expressions. We report two studies in which we used an established paradigm tapping negative emotion differentiation and several emotion recognition tasks. In Study 1 (N = 363), we found that individuals high in emotion differentiation were more accurate in recognizing others’ emotional facial expressions. Study 2 (N = 217), replicated this finding using emotion recognition tasks with varying amounts of emotional information. These findings suggest that the knowledge we use to understand our own emotional experience also helps us understand the emotions of others.

Age Advantages of Emotional Experience during the COVID-19 Pandemic are Robust, but Diminished Compared to Pre-pandemic Conditions

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rui Sun ◽  
Disa Sauter
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Negative Emotion ◽  
Emotional Experience ◽  
Negative Emotions ◽  
Older Individuals ◽  
Selection Strategies ◽  
Scale Test ◽  
Prolonged Stress

Getting old is generally seen as unappealing, yet aging confers considerable advantages in several psychological domains (North & Fiske, 2015). In particular, older adults are better off emotionally than younger adults, with aging associated with the so-called “age advantages,” that is, more positive and less negative emotional experiences (Carstensen et al., 2011). Although the age advantages are well established, it is less clear whether they occur under conditions of prolonged stress. In a recent study, Carstensen et al (2020) demonstrated that the age advantages persist during the COVID-19 pandemic, suggesting that older adults are able to utilise cognitive and behavioural strategies to ameliorate even sustained stress. Here, we build on Carstensen and colleagues’ work with two studies. In Study 1, we provide a large-scale test of the robustness of Carstensen and colleagues’ finding that older individuals experience more positive and less negative emotions during the COVID-19 pandemic. We measured positive and negative emotions along with age information in 23,629 participants in 63 countries in April-May 2020. In Study 2, we provide a comparison of the age advantages using representative samples collected before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. We demonstrate that older people experience less negative emotion than younger people during the prolonged stress of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the advantage of older adults was diminished during the pandemic, pointing to a likely role of older adults use of situation selection strategies (Charles, 2010).

scholarly journals Cultural Differences in the Hedonic Rewards of Recalling Kindness: Priming Cultural Identity with Language

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-90
Author(s):  
Lilian J. Shin ◽  
Seth M. Margolis ◽  
Lisa C. Walsh ◽  
Sylvia Y. C. L. Kwok ◽  
Xiaodong Yue ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Emotional Experience ◽  
Chinese Language ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Cultural Identities ◽  
Weak Ties ◽  
Recent Theory ◽  
Emotional Experiences ◽  
The Usa

AbstractRecent theory suggests that members of interdependent (collectivist) cultures prioritize in-group happiness, whereas members of independent (individualist) cultures prioritize personal happiness (Uchida et al. Journal of Happiness Studies, 5(3), 223–239 Uchida et al., 2004). Thus, the well-being of friends and family may contribute more to the emotional experience of individuals with collectivist rather than individualist identities. We tested this hypothesis by asking participants to recall a kind act they had done to benefit either close others (e.g., family members) or distant others (e.g., strangers). Study 1 primed collectivist and individualist cultural identities by asking bicultural undergraduates (N = 357) from Hong Kong to recall kindnesses towards close versus distant others in both English and Chinese, while Study 2 compared university students in the USA (n = 106) and Hong Kong (n = 93). In Study 1, after being primed with the Chinese language (but not after being primed with English), participants reported significantly improved affect valence after recalling kind acts towards friends and family than after recalling kind acts towards strangers. Extending this result, in Study 2, respondents from Hong Kong (but not the USA) who recalled kind acts towards friends and family showed higher positive affect than those who recalled kind acts towards strangers. These findings suggest that people with collectivist cultural identities may have relatively more positive and less negative emotional experiences when they focus on prosocial interactions with close rather than weak ties.

The Integration of Emotional Expression and Experience: A Pragmatist Review of Recent Evidence From Brain Stimulation

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caruana Fausto
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Expression ◽  
Supplementary Motor Area ◽  
Emotional Experience ◽  
Anterior Cingulate ◽  
Emotional Expressions ◽  
Affective Neuroscience ◽  
Common View ◽  
Frontal Operculum ◽  
Affective Experiences ◽  
Stimulation Of

A common view in affective neuroscience considers emotions as a multifaceted phenomenon constituted by independent affective and motor components. Such dualistic connotation, obtained by rephrasing the classic Darwin and James’s theories of emotion, leads to the assumption that emotional expression is controlled by motor centers in the anterior cingulate, frontal operculum, and supplementary motor area, whereas emotional experience depends on interoceptive centers in the insula. Recent stimulation studies provide a different perspective. I will outline two sets of findings. First, affective experiences can be elicited also following the stimulation of motor centers. Second, emotional expressions can be elicited by stimulating interoceptive regions. Echoing the original pragmatist theories of emotion, I will make a case for the notion that emotional experience emerges from the integration of sensory and motor signals, encoded in the same functional network.

Beyond a Single Pattern of Mixed Emotional Experience

2009 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 58-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luis Oceja ◽  
Pilar Carrera
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Experience ◽  
Emotional Experiences ◽  
Emotional Ambivalence ◽  
Single Pattern ◽  
Different Levels

The Analogical Emotional Scale (AES) permits respondents to represent the changes that occur in the course of two different emotions over the time in which they are experienced ( Carrera & Oceja, 2007 ). We tested whether the use of the AES allows us to go beyond the distinction between sequential and simultaneous emotional experiences. Specifically, the AES permits us to detect and discriminate at least four different patterns of mixed emotional experience: sequential, prevalence, inverse, and highly simultaneous. We carried out four studies in which different stimuli were used for inducing emotion: personal memories, verbal accounts, videos, and photographs. The results supported our expectation that these four patterns are associated with different levels of emotional ambivalence and tension along a continuum from lesser to greater: sequential, prevalence, inverse, and highly simultaneous.

scholarly journals High emotion differentiation buffers against internalizing symptoms following exposure to stressful life events in adolescence: An intensive longitudinal study

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik C Nook ◽  
John Coleman Flournoy ◽  
Alexandra M Rodman ◽  
Patrick Mair ◽  
Katie A McLaughlin
Keyword(s):  
Longitudinal Study ◽  
Life Events ◽  
Internalizing Problems ◽  
Internalizing Symptoms ◽  
Stressful Life Events ◽  
Negative Emotion ◽  
Stressful Life ◽  
Emotion Differentiation ◽  
Affective Science ◽  
The Face

Exposure to stressful life events is strongly associated with internalizing psychopathology, and identifying factors that reduce vulnerability to stress-related internalizing problems is critical for development of early interventions. Drawing on research from affective science, we tested whether high emotion differentiation—the ability to specifically identify one’s feelings—buffers adolescents from developing internalizing symptoms when exposed to stress. Thirty adolescents completed a laboratory measure of emotion differentiation before an intensive year-long longitudinal study in which exposure to stress and internalizing problems were assessed at both the moment-level (n=4,921 experience sampling assessments) and monthly-level (n=355 monthly assessments). High negative and positive emotion differentiation attenuated moment-level coupling between perceived stress and feelings of depression, and high negative emotion differentiation eliminated monthly-level associations between stressful life events and anxiety symptoms. These results suggest that high emotion differentiation buffers adolescents against anxiety and depression in the face of stress, perhaps by facilitating adaptive emotion regulation.

scholarly journals Emotions vocabulary and the reconceptualisation of emotions in Ann Radcliffe’s “The Italian, or the Confessional of the Black Penitents”

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-58
Author(s):  
Elena D. Andonova-Kalapsazova
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Emotional Experience ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Emotional Experiences ◽  
Critical Studies ◽  
Francis Hutcheson ◽  
History Of

The article undertakes the analysis of Ann Radcliffe’s novel The Italian, or the Confessional of the Black Penitents (1797) from a history of literary emotions perspective which, I argue, yields insights into the attitudes towards emotions embedded in Radcliffe’s works. A reading of the novel from such a perspective also complements the critical studies of the artist’s engaging with the eighteenth-century cult of sensibility. The novel is read as a text that registered but also participated in the dissemination of an epistemology of emotional experience articulated in the idiom of eighteenth-century moral philosophers – Francis Hutcheson, David Hume and Adam Smith - at the same time as it retained some of the older, theology-based conceptions of passions and affections. The dynamic in which the two frameworks for understanding the emotions exist in the novel is explored through a close reading of the vocabulary in which Radcliffe rendered the emotional experiences of her fictional characters. In this reading it is the passions which are found to have been invested with a variety of meanings and attributed a range of moral valences that most noticeably foreground the movement from a generally negative towards a more complex appreciation of powerful emotions.

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