Exploring negative affect dynamics in high resolution: within-person relationship of inertia and instability with depression is mediated by affect intensity

Background: Temporal patterns of affective functioning such as emotional inertia and instability may indicate changes in emotion regulation that predict depression. However, affect dynamics’ incremental validity over affect intensity and exposure to stressors in predicting depression has been questioned.Methods: We collected longitudinal data regarding momentary affective states (measured multiple times a day), perceived stressors and depressive symptoms (measured every three days) from a general population sample during the COVID-19 pandemic’s first wave in Hungary. The final dataset included 7165 affective states surveys from 125 participants, which were aggregated in 464 three-day measurement windows. Using multilevel models, we explored the unique effects of within-person changes in mean level, inertia, and instability of negative affective states (NA), and stressor-exposure on two domains of depression (anhedonia and negative mood and thoughts) within the three-day windows.Results: Within-person increases in NA inertia and NA instability showed significant positive associations with negative mood and thoughts. These effects did not remain significant after adjusting for mean levels of NA. Multilevel mediation analysis revealed that within individuals, NA inertia and instability indirectly predicted negative mood and thoughts through elevated NA mean.Limitations: The application of self-report questionnaires might bias the results, and the overrepresentation of female participants could limit the generalizability of the findings.Conclusions: Specific patterns of temporal affective functioning are indirect predictors of depressive symptoms at the within-individual level. Our findings may facilitate automated depression risk assessment on the basis of simple affective time series.

The Gender Life Satisfaction/Depression Paradox

According to the gender life satisfaction/depression paradox women are significantly more likely to report higher levels of life satisfaction than men after controlling for all relevant socio-demographic factors, but also significantly more likely to declare they are depressed. We find that the paradox holds in the cross-country sample of the European Social Survey and is stable across age, education, self-assessed health, macroregion and survey round splits. We find support for the affect intensity rationale showing that women are relatively more affected in their satisfaction about life by the good or bad events or achievements occurring during their existence and less resilient (less likely to revert to their standard levels of happiness after a shock). We as well discuss biological, genetic, cultural, personality rationales advocated in the literature that can explain our findings.

Changes in values and well-being amidst the COVID-19 pandemic in Poland

COVID-19 caused a global change in the lifestyles of people around the world. It provided a unique opportunity to examine how external circumstances impact two crucial aspects of functioning relating to "who I am" (values) and "how I feel" (well-being). Participants (N = 215) reported their values and subjective and eudaimonic well-being, nine months before the first lockdown in Poland and two weeks and four weeks into the first lockdown. We observed increased valuing of self-direction, security, conformity, humility, caring, and universalism and a decrease in valuing hedonism. Individuals experienced decreased subjective and eudaimonic well-being, with women responding with stronger negative affect intensity relative to men. Finally, we identified that individuals who were more open to change before the COVID-19 pandemic responded with higher eudaimonic well-being two weeks into lockdown relative to their less open to change peers. This study is unique in that it shows that well-being and individually held values are flexible and adaptive systems that react to external circumstances such as global critical events.

The effect of augmented reality versus traditional advertising: a comparison between neurophysiological and self-reported measures

Despite the growing application of augmented reality in advertising, there is limited understanding about how customers respond to their interaction with the augmented reality advertising and how it differs from a standard paper-based advertising. Augmented reality ads are immersive, interactive, and lifelike, which means they may help companies create an emotional connection with their customers. The authors test if customers would respond in terms of emotional and affective intensity differently to augmented reality versus standard paper-based advertising. The results of two laboratory studies that consider physiological measures of arousal (galvanic skin response), self-reported measure of affect intensity and willingness to pay show that the higher willingness to pay for customers exposed to augmented reality as opposed to standard paper-based ads is driven by the physiological arousal, but not by the self-reported affect intensity and that processing fluency possibly underlies consumer’s enhanced emotional responses toward AR. These results suggest that replacing traditional advertisements with augmented reality advertisements enhances customer physiological responses and willingness to pay, with possible implications on customer segmentation and marketing communication.

Involuntary Memories of War-Related Scenes in Veterans With PTSD

Studies suggest that general control deficits and elevated affect intensity in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) extend beyond memory for the index trauma. However, few researchers have pursued this possibility experimentally by examining memory for novel events. We used an experimental design to measure the frequency and characteristics of involuntary memories over time. Veterans with and without PTSD saw pictures of neutral and war-related scenes. Half of the participants completed an involuntary-retrieval task immediately after encoding, whereas the other half completed the retrieval task after 1 week. Veterans with PTSD had stronger emotional reactions to their involuntary memories of the scenes regardless of their original valence. The emotional impact and specificity of the memories did not diminish over time in PTSD veterans but did so in the control group. The findings are consistent with an increased emotional response to a range of memories that include—but are not limited to—memories of traumatic events.

Prenatal maternal transdiagnostic, RDoC-informed predictors of newborn neurobehavior: Differences by sex

We examined whether Research Domain Criteria (RDoC)-informed measures of prenatal stress predicted newborn neurobehavior and whether these effects differed by newborn sex. Multilevel, prenatal markers of prenatal stress were obtained from 162 pregnant women. Markers of the Negative Valence System included physiological functioning (respiratory sinus arrhythmia [RSA] and electrodermal [EDA] reactivity to a speech task, hair cortisol), self-reported stress (state anxiety, pregnancy-specific anxiety, daily stress, childhood trauma, economic hardship, and family resources), and interviewer-rated stress (episodic stress, chronic stress). Markers of the Arousal/Regulatory System included physiological functioning (baseline RSA, RSA, and EDA responses to infant cries) and self-reported affect intensity, urgency, emotion regulation strategies, and dispositional mindfulness. Newborns’ arousal and attention were assessed via the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) Network Neurobehavioral Scale. Path analyses showed that high maternal episodic and daily stress, low economic hardship, few emotion regulation strategies, and high baseline RSA predicted female newborns’ low attention; maternal mindfulness predicted female newborns’ high arousal. As for male newborns, high episodic stress predicted low arousal, and high pregnancy-specific anxiety predicted high attention. Findings suggest that RDoC-informed markers of prenatal stress could aid detection of variance in newborn neurobehavioral outcomes within hours after birth. Implications for intergenerational transmission of risk for psychopathology are discussed.

Working for the best or bracing for the worst? Approach and avoidance motivation in planning

Even though planning is generally helpful in goal pursuit, people do not always choose to plan. The inclination to plan might depend on whether we focus on what we seek to approach or what we seek to avoid. In two pre-registered experiments, we tested the relative effect of approach versus avoidance motivation on willingness to plan (total N=1349). With outcome framing as the experimental manipulation, participants were randomly assigned to either an approach or an avoidance condition, and then indicated their willingness to plan their study activities before an upcoming exam. Contrary to predictions, the results showed no significant difference in willingness to plan depending on condition in either experiment. There was mixed support for the importance of anticipated affect and perceived distance as process mechanisms: While Experiment 1 showed that participants who experienced the day of the exam as closer in time were more willing to plan their study preparations (regardless of condition), we found no mediational effects through perceived distance or anticipated affect. In Experiment 2, anticipated affect intensity mediated the association between motivation and willingness to plan, where participants induced to approach motivation predicted greater intensity of anticipated affect upon achieving their goals, and thus were more willing to plan than participants induced to avoidance motivation. However, such mediation effects without a main effect remain ambiguous and should be interpreted with caution. Seen as a whole, the results suggest that the effect of different motivation types on the willingness to plan may be different than previously thought: They may not influence this aspect of goal striving.