The role of implicit learning and cue ambiguity on the subjective experience of affective predictions: a follow-up behavioral investigation.

People use their previous experience to predict present affective events. Since we live in ever-changing environments, affective predictions must generalize from past contexts (from which they are implicitly learned) to new, potentially ambiguous contexts. This study investigated how past (un)certain relationships influence subjective experience following new ambiguous cues, and whether past relationships can be learned implicitly. Two S1-S2 paradigms were employed as learning and test phases in two experiments. S1s were colored circles, S2s negative or neutral affective pictures. Participants (N = 121, 116) were assigned to the certain (CG) or uncertain group (UG), and they were presented with 100% (CG) or 50% (UG) S1-S2 congruency during an uninstructed (Experiment 1) or implicit (Experiment 2) learning phase. During the test phase both groups were presented with a new 75% S1-S2 paradigm, and ambiguous (Experiment 1) or unambiguous (Experiment 2) S1s. Participants were asked to rate the expected valence of upcoming S2s (expectancy ratings), or their experienced valence and arousal (valence and arousal ratings). In Experiment 1 ambiguous cues elicited less negative expectancy ratings, and less unpleasant valence ratings, independently from prior experience. In Experiment 2, participants in the CG reported more negative expectancy ratings after the S1s previously paired with negative stimuli. Overall, we found that in the presence of ambiguous cues subjective affective experience is dampened, and we confirmed that people are able to infer probabilistic relationships from the environment (and to use them later) at an implicit level.

Shifting qualities of negative affective experience through adolescence: Age-related change and associations with functional outcomes

Research shows negative affect increases in healthy adolescents, and this normative change is paralleled by increasing risk for the onset of psychopathology. However, research is limited in characterizing qualitative differences in the type of negative affect experienced beyond the positive-negative valence dimension. In the current study, we establish the relationship between different forms of negative affect and functioning outcomes (i.e., different facets of social functioning and life satisfaction), and examine whether these forms of negative affect are differentially prevalent across late childhood and adolescence. 770 participants aged 8-17 years completed self-report measures that assessed a wide range of negative affective experiences. A factor analysis on the negative affect items revealed a 4-factor solution that characterized the dimensions of affective experience, with factors reflecting general anxiety, anger, evaluative anxiety, and sadness. Generalized additive model approaches revealed general anxiety increased non-linearly with age and was associated with decreased reports of emotional support, a facet of social functioning. Anger was associated with increased perceived hostility, perceived rejection, and decreased life satisfaction, and remained stable across the age range. Evaluative anxiety was associated with greater loneliness and increased linearly with increasing age. Sadness was associated with all outcome measures and showed non-linear changes with age, with notable increases in mid-adolescence. These results show that subsuming these subtypes of negative affect under a singular concept may obscure meaningful relationships between affect, age, and functioning. Exploring diverse forms of negative affect may help refine theories of emotional development and ultimately inform windows of risk for psychopathology.

Attachment Style Differences in the Affective Experience of Chronic Pain in Osteoarthritis

Objective: To examine the role of adult attachment style in the daily affective experiences of older adults with physician-confirmed knee osteoarthritis (OA). Methods: As part of a larger study of racial/ethnic differences in everyday quality of life with OA, 292 persons over the age of 50 completed a baseline interview including the Revised Adult Attachment Scale (RAAS; Collins, 1996). Dimensional RAAS attachment scores were coded into the secure, preoccupied, fearful, and dismissing groups (Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991). Positive affect (PA), negative affect (NA), and pain were assessed using an experience sampling methodology consisting of 4 daily phone calls over 7 days. These analyses used ANCOVAs to examine 28-call means and SDs for PA, NA, and pain. Results: After controlling for demographics, results indicated significant group differences in average PA, NA, and pain. Pairwise comparisons indicated that participants endorsing a stable attachment style reported significantly more PA and less NA than those with a fearful attachment style. Group differences for pain were marginal and less clear cut. Significant differences also emerged for variability of NA and pain. Individuals with a secure attachment style were significantly less variable in NA than those in the fearful and preoccupied groups. For pain variability, the preoccupied group showed more variability than those with secure or dismissive styles. Implications: Results contribute to a growing understanding of how individual attachment style may underlie the day-to-day affective experience of chronic pain. (Supported by R01-AG041655, D. Smith and P. Parmelee, PIs.)

Moments of Meaningfulness and Meaninglessness: A Qualitative Inquiry Into Affective Eudaimonia at Work

Meaningful work (MW) is an important topic in psychological and organizational research with theoretical and practical implications. Many prior studies have focused on operationalizing MW and distinguish between the attributes of a job that make it meaningful, such as task variety or significance, and the affective experience of meaning during work, such as the feeling that what one does at work is meaningful. However, most empirical research focuses on the former definition and utilizes quantitative scales with deductive questions that omit what people find important in their experiences. To address this, we conduct a qualitative investigation of psychological narratives focusing in-depth on the quality and content of feelings of meaningfulness and meaninglessness during experiences at work—crucially, without any framing around task attributes. We introduce the term affective eudaimonia to describe these experiences. Overall, our results corroborate many existing thematic findings in the MW literature, such as the importance of connecting and contributing to others and avoiding confinement. We also offer new findings: Although the way that people give language to meaningless narratives is more descriptive, vivid, and experiential in tone than meaningful narratives, meaningless narratives are also more structurally static and constrained. We use these results to inform practical suggestions to promote day-to-day experiences of meaning at work and provide a basis for further academic discussion.

Momentary Manifestations of Negative Symptoms as Predictors of Clinical Outcomes in People at High Risk for Psychosis: Experience Sampling Study

Background Negative symptoms occur in individuals at ultrahigh risk (UHR) for psychosis. Although there is evidence that observer ratings of negative symptoms are associated with level of functioning, the predictive value of subjective experience in daily life for individuals at UHR has not been studied yet. Objective This study therefore aims to investigate the predictive value of momentary manifestations of negative symptoms for clinical outcomes in individuals at UHR. Methods Experience sampling methodology was used to measure momentary manifestations of negative symptoms (blunted affective experience, lack of social drive, anhedonia, and social anhedonia) in the daily lives of 79 individuals at UHR. Clinical outcomes (level of functioning, illness severity, UHR status, and transition status) were assessed at baseline and at 1- and 2-year follow-ups. Results Lack of social drive, operationalized as greater experienced pleasantness of being alone, was associated with poorer functioning at the 2-year follow-up (b=−4.62, P=.01). Higher levels of anhedonia were associated with poorer functioning at the 1-year follow-up (b=5.61, P=.02). Higher levels of social anhedonia were associated with poorer functioning (eg, disability subscale: b=6.36, P=.006) and greater illness severity (b=−0.38, P=.045) at the 1-year follow-up. In exploratory analyses, there was evidence that individuals with greater variability of positive affect (used as a measure of blunted affective experience) experienced a shorter time to remission from UHR status at follow-up (hazard ratio=4.93, P=.005). Conclusions Targeting negative symptoms in individuals at UHR may help to predict clinical outcomes and may be a promising target for interventions in the early stages of psychosis.

The goal-relevance of affective stimuli is dynamically represented in affective experience

Affect is a continuous and temporally dependent process that represents an individual's ongoing relationship with its environment. However, there is a lack of evidence on how factors defining the dynamic sensory environment modulate changes in momentary affective experience. Here, we show that goal-dependent relevance of stimuli is a key factor shaping momentary affect in a dynamic context. Participants ( N = 83) viewed sequentially presented images and reported their momentary affective experience after every fourth stimulus. Relevance was manipulated through an attentional task that rendered each image either task-relevant or task-irrelevant. Computational models were fitted to trial-by-trial affective responses to capture the key dynamic parameters explaining momentary affective experience. The findings from statistical analyses and computational models showed that momentary affective experience was shaped by the temporal integration of the affective impact of recently encountered stimuli, and that task-relevant stimuli, independent of stimulus affect, prompted larger changes in experienced pleasantness compared with task-irrelevant stimuli. These findings clearly show that dynamics of affective experience reflect goal-relevance of stimuli in our surroundings.

Interpersonal and Intersubjective Alienation in Social Stigmatization and Depression

The subjective experience of social stigma has been widely researched in terms of discrimination, rejection, isolation, etc. These are commonly understood within the traditional individualistic framework of affective experience and sociality, which fails to address the transformative effects of social stigma on how one experiences the social realm and the own self in general. Phenomenology and recent work on the relationality of affective experience acknowledge the central role interpersonal interactions play in subjectivity and offer a suitable approach towards addressing the complexity of the subjective experience of social stigma. Focussing on autobiographical accounts, I propose that the experience of social stigmatization is characterized by an affective atmosphere of interpersonal alienation. Its counterpart, an atmosphere of belonging, is closely related to social empathy, which is eroded by prejudicial attitudes and stereotypes. The breakdown of social empathy establishes a peculiar form of relationless relationality that radically transforms one’s subjectivity. The transformation of subjectivity is structurally similar to disturbances of intersubjectivity in psychopathological conditions such as depression and feelings of disconnectedness, loneliness, and even shame are common in both cases.