First look at the five-factor model personality facet associations with sensory processing sensitivity

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How do my parents react when I feel happy? Longitudinal associations with adolescent depressive symptoms, anhedonia, and positive affect regulation

Parental emotion socialization plays a role in the development of adolescents’ emotion regulation and is associated with adolescents’ depressive symptoms. Most research has focused on parental socialization of negative affect. The scarce research on parental socialization of positive affect (PA) shows that parental downgrading responses to adolescents’ PA are associated with concurrent adolescent depression. The aims of the present study were to examine longitudinal associations of both maternal and paternal responses to adolescents’ PA with how adolescents regulate their PA (i.e., dampening and enhancing) and with adolescents’ general depressive symptoms and anhedonia. We also considered associations in the opposite direction from adolescent regulatory responses and symptoms to parental responses. In a two‐wave study (1‐year interval), 635 adolescents from Grade seven completed questionnaires. Cross‐sectionally, maternal and paternal responses to adolescents’ PA were associated with concurrent adolescents’ PA regulation as well as adolescents’ depressive and anhedonic symptoms. Longitudinally, low maternal and paternal enhancing responses to adolescents’ PA predicted relative increases in anhedonic symptoms and relative decreases in adolescent enhancing over time. Low maternal enhancing was also predictive of relative increases in depressive symptoms. The present study points to bidirectionality of relations as adolescents’ level of depressive symptoms predicted maternal and paternal responses.status: Published onlin

When Do Good Things Lift You Up? Dampening, Enhancing, and Uplifts in Relation To Depressive and Anhedonic Symptoms in Early Adolescence

Longitudinal studies examining the role of response styles to positive affect (i.e., dampening and enhancing) for depressive symptoms have yielded inconsistent results. We examined concurrent and prospective relations of dampening and enhancing with depressive and anhedonic symptoms, and whether these relations depend on the frequency of uplifts. Early adolescents (N = 674, 51.6% girls, Mage = 12.7 years, range 11.3-14.9) completed questionnaires three times (one-year intervals). Dampening interacted with daily uplifts predicting concurrent depressive symptoms. Dampening was unrelated to depressive and anhedonic symptoms one year later. High dampening and low enhancing predicted relative increases in anhedonia over two years. Relationships did not differ for girls and boys. Therapeutic interventions designed to promote adaptive responding to positive affect may, thus, reduce anhedonia in adolescence.status: publishe

Temporal associations between social anxiety and depressive symptoms and the role of interpersonal stress in adolescents

BACKGROUND: Adolescence is characterized by an increased vulnerability for internalizing psychopathologies such as depression and anxiety. A positive association between anxiety and depression has consistently been found in research. However, the specific direction of this association is less clear. In this study, we investigated the temporal associations between (social) anxiety and depressive symptoms. Furthermore, the role of dependent interpersonal stress as a potential mediating factor in these temporal associations was examined. METHODS: Data were part of a larger longitudinal study on the emotional development of adolescents, which was initiated in February 2013. The total sample consisted of 2011 adolescents between the ages of 11 and 19. Data were analyzed using cross-lagged models. RESULTS: Bidirectional positive associations were found between social anxiety symptoms and depressive symptoms. However, dependent interpersonal stress was not a mediator in the link between social anxiety and depression. Our results indicate that dependent interpersonal stress seems to be particularly related to depressive symptoms and not to social anxiety symptoms. CONCLUSIONS: Findings suggest that bidirectional associations between social anxiety and depressive symptoms exist. This implies that clinicians should be specifically vigilant for the development of depressive symptoms in socially anxious adolescents and the development of social anxiety symptoms in depressed adolescents. Our findings further highlight the importance of targeting dependent interpersonal stress in the context of depression.status: publishe

Brooding and reflecting in an interpersonal context

Rumination consists of two components: brooding, which increases depressive feelings, and reflection, which appears to be unrelated to or protective against depression. The present study is the first to extend the intrapersonal constructs of brooding and reflection to the interpersonal context, thereby relying on previous work in the domain of co-rumination. In this two-wave longitudinal study, a community sample of 371 pupils (63.1% girls) aged 9-15 years was followed up over a three-month interval. Using items drawn from the Co-Rumination Questionnaire (Rose, 2002), a two-factor model distinguishing between co-brooding and co-reflection was validated using confirmatory factor analysis. Both co-brooding and co-reflection emerged as significant unique predictors of depressive symptoms over a three-month interval, above and beyond sex and baseline depressive symptoms. Co-brooding had a positive association with prospective depressive symptoms, whereas co-reflection was inversely related to prospective symptom levels. This pattern of results was unchanged when controlling for intrapersonal brooding and reflection. Post-hoc analyses revealed that co-brooding and co-reflection could be framed as higher order factors, each encompassing two lower-order factors and that the effects are carried by specific aspects of co-brooding and co-reflection, i.e. co-brooding on consequences and co-reflecting on causes of problems.publisher: Elsevier articletitle: Brooding and reflecting in an interpersonal context journaltitle: Personality and Individual Differences articlelink: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2014.01.062 content_type: article copyright: Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.status: publishe

Trait affectivity and response styles to positive affect: Negative affectivity relates to dampening and positive affectivity relates to enhancing

© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. Although there is ample research linking trait affect with response styles for negative affect, research on the link between trait affect and response styles for positive affect is scarce. The first aim of this study was to examine whether trait positive affect (trait PA) and trait negative affect (trait NA) predict cognitive response styles for positive affect. The second aim of this study was to examine whether such associations may be unidirectional or bidirectional. In three separate longitudinal datasets (N = 371, N = 1552, N = 183), we assessed trait PA, trait NA, dampening, and enhancing and examined cross-sectional and prospective relations among these constructs in children and young adolescents. Cross-sectionally, we found a robust relation between trait NA and dampening, whereas trait PA was unrelated to dampening. In terms of directionality, higher trait NA predicted more subsequent dampening in two of the three samples. For trait PA and enhancing, the longitudinal results pointed to a reciprocal positive relationship. The results support models of trait affect as a predictor of cognitive response styles to affect and extended these models by showing that a reciprocal relationship from the response style (i.e., enhancing) to trait affect should also be considered.publisher: Elsevier articletitle: Trait affectivity and response styles to positive affect: Negative affectivity relates to dampening and positive affectivity relates to enhancing journaltitle: Personality and Individual Differences articlelink: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2016.02.087 content_type: article copyright: Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.status: publishe

Party pooper or life of the party: Dampening and enhancing of positive affect in a peer context

Dampening and enhancing responses to positive affect have been linked to depressive symptoms. The main aim of the present study was to examine such responses in an interpersonal peer context and to examine their relation with depressive symptoms. A community sample of 665 seventh-graders (52.0% girls, Mage = 12.7 years) took part in the study. Using a newly developed questionnaire, the Co-Dampening and Co-Enhancing Questionnaire (CoDEQ), a two-factor model distinguishing co-dampening and co-enhancing was validated. Relations with general depressive symptoms, anhedonic symptoms, and friendship quality were investigated. The direction of relations was examined over a 1-year interval using cross-lagged analyses. Cross-sectional results revealed that higher levels of co-dampening and lower levels of co-enhancing were associated with more depressive and anhedonic symptoms, while controlling for co-rumination levels. For anhedonic symptoms, this pattern also held over and above intrapersonal dampening and enhancing. Friendship quality was related to higher concurrent levels of co-enhancing and lower levels of co-dampening. The longitudinal results pointed towards a scar model, in that both depressive and anhedonic symptoms predicted relative increases in co-dampening over time; however, this did not hold in a model in which dampening and enhancing were included as control variables.status: publishe

Moderating effects of brooding and co-rumination on the relationship between stress and depressive symptoms in early adolescence: A multi-wave study

The current study investigated brooding and co-rumination as moderators of the relationship between interpersonal and noninterpersonal stress and depressive symptom trajectories. The sample consisted of 368 early adolescents ages 9 to 15 (M = 11.72, 63% female) who completed self-report measures of brooding, co-rumination, stress, and depressive symptoms at baseline with follow-up assessments of stress and depressive symptoms at 3, 8, and 12 months post-baseline. Data were analyzed using multi-level modeling. Results showed that the association between interpersonal stress and depressive symptoms was stronger for adolescents high on brooding, compared to adolescents low on brooding. Sex moderated a co-rumination × stress interaction, with girls high on co-rumination and boys low on co-rumination reporting the highest levels of depressive symptoms when faced with interpersonal stress across the one-year study period. These findings shed light on pathways to depressive symptoms in early adolescence and suggest that adolescent boys and girls may differ in these pathways.status: publishe

Repetitive Negative Thinking outperforms loneliness and lack of social connectedness as a predictor of prospective depressive symptoms in adolescents

Background: Repetitive Negative Thinking (RNT) is a well-established predictor in adolescents of emotional problems, such as depression. Surprisingly little research, however, has looked at the relative importance of RNT vs. more interpersonally relevant variables in the context of depression, such as loneliness and lack of social connectedness. Objective: The present study, therefore, set out to examine whether RNT is a significant predictor when taking into account the contribution of loneliness and social connectedness. Methods: A sample of 135 typically developing adolescents (N = 135; 79.3% girls; M-age = 17.5; range 16-21) completed measures of depressive symptoms, RNT, loneliness and social connectedness at two time points with a 3-month interval. Results: Results showed that above and beyond baseline depressive symptoms, RNT was the only other significant predictor of prospective depressive symptoms. Conclusions: According to these results, RNT seems a relatively more important factor to consider in the context of adolescent depression than factors in the interpersonal or social context. Consequently, targeting RNT might be expected to yield more significant gains in reducing or preventing depressive symptoms in adolescents compared to focusing on feelings of loneliness or social connectedness - a hypothesis that remains to be tested