Sociomarkers of anhedonia in MDD

Background: Anhedonia is one of the two core symptoms of MDD, described as the decreased ability to experience pleasure in daily life. We aimed to describe anhedonia in everyday life of patients with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), and investigate its link to social stress. We semi-randomly sampled anhedonia and social stress ten times a day, for seven consecutive days, by means of Experience Sampling Methods in the daily life of 53 MDD patients. Results: Multilevel analyses showed that anhedonia was less severe when patient were in company of others (versus being alone). Social stress was linked to anhedonia, both concurrently and prospectively. Albeit less strongly, anhedonia also prospectively predicted increases in social stress. Conclusions: Experiencing an increase in social stress makes it harder for depressed patients to experience pleasure in both current and future activities, suggesting that social stressors might put MDD patients at risk for the development of anhedonia

A 32-society investigation of the influence of perceived economic inequality on social class stereotyping

International audienceThere is a growing body of work suggesting that social class stereotypes are amplified when people perceive higher levels of economic inequality-that is, the wealthy are perceived as more competent and assertive and the poor as more incompetent and unassertive. The present study tested this prediction in 32 societies and also examines the role of wealth-based categorization in explaining this relationship. We found that people who perceived higher economic inequality were indeed more likely to consider wealth as a meaningful basis for categorization. Unexpectedly, however, higher levels of perceived inequality were associated with perceiving the wealthy as less competent and assertive and the poor as more competent and assertive. Unpacking this further, exploratory analyses showed that the observed tendency to stereotype the wealthy negatively only emerged in societies with lower social mobility and democracy and higher corruption. This points to the importance of understanding how socio-structural features that co-occur with economic inequality may shape perceptions of the wealthy and the poor

Poor Emotion Regulation Ability Mediates the Link between Depressive Symptoms and Affective Bipolarity - Preprint

People’s relationship between positive and negative affect varies on a continuum from relatively independent to bipolar opposites, with stronger bipolar opposition being termed affective bipolarity. Experiencing more depressive symptoms is associated with increased bipolarity, but the processes underlying this relation are not yet understood. Here, we sought to replicate this link, and to examine the role of two potential mediating mechanisms: emotion regulation ability, and trait brooding. Drawing from the Dynamic Model of Affect, we hypothesized that (a) a poor ability to regulate negative emotion, and (b) the tendency to brood over one’s depressed feelings would predict stronger affective bipolarity, and mediate the relationship between depressive symptoms and affective bipolarity. To measure affective bipolarity, we calculated within-person affect correlations using two weeks of experience sampling data from a community sample (n = 100). Mediation analyses indicated that baseline assessments of an inability to regulate negative emotions in general, but not brooding specifically, mediated the relation between depressive symptoms and affective bipolarity. These findings highlight an initial mechanism through which depressive symptoms are associated with lower emotional complexity and flexibility

The relation between positive and negative affect in depression

How positive and negative feelings are interrelated in everyday emotional experience is a question that has intrigued affective scientists for decades. Can we experience levels of positive affect (PA) irrespective of the experienced level of negative affect (NA; i.e., affective independence), or do these emotional states represent the mutually exclusive ends of a single bipolar continuum (i.e., affective bipolarity)? The overarching premise of this dissertation is that the relation between positive and negative affect is neither universal, nor fixed. That is, there are both between-person differences in the affect relation, as well as within-person changes. From a between-person perspective, we argue that people's PA-NA relation may be informative for their well-being, with a tendency towards stronger affective bipolarity signaling poor psychological adjustment. From a within-person perspective, we argue that temporary shifts towards stronger affective bipolarity occur when we encounter events or situations that activate personally relevant concerns. In this way, the current thesis can be seen as an attempt to bring additional nuance to the ongoing debate about the relation between PA and NA in general, but also to understand how changes in this relation may be considered adaptive or maladaptive for our well-being specifically. In Chapter 1, we focus on between-person differences in the affect relation. First, we provide a brief overview of the different viewpoints on the structure of affect in normal human experience, and review prominent emotion theories that relate changes in the PA-NA relation to psychological well-being. Specifically, we argue that an emotional life that is pushed towards bipolarity should be particularly evident in people who experience depressive symptoms, a type of symptomatology that typically involves a diminished experience of PA, in combination with elevated levels of NA. We find evidence for this idea in three experience sampling (ESM) studies, both concurrently (Study 1) and prospectively (Study 2), as well as with different conceptual operationalizations of PA and NA (Study 3). Across studies, we demonstrate that affective bipolarity shows particular specificity toward depressive symptomatology, in comparison with anxiety symptoms. In Chapter 2, we keep a between-person focus, and aim to get additional insight in the specifics of the relation between depressive symptoms and affective bipolarity. Specifically, we examine the role of two potential mediating mechanisms: emotion regulation ability and trait brooding. We show that people's poor ability to regulate negative emotions in general, but not brooding specifically, mediates the link between depressive symptoms and affective bipolarity, which may highlight an initial mechanism through which depressive symptomatology is associated with lower emotional complexity and flexibility. In Chapter 3, we still adopt a between-person angle, and compare the explanatory power of affective bipolarity in the prediction of psychological well-being with other commonly investigated affect dynamic measures. Although we show that a bipolar affect relation indeed captures a unique dynamical aspect of one's emotional life, and hence shows little overlap with other affect dynamic measures, once individual differences in mere average levels of positive and negative affect are taken into account, the predictive capacity of the affect relation decreases drastically in the prediction of people's depressive and borderline symptoms, and life satisfaction. Our findings illustrate that mean levels of affect are the most prominent indicators of psychological well-being, and put the added value of more complex affect dynamic measures (such as affective bipolarity) in perspective. In Chapter 4, we focus on within-person changes in the affect relation. Drawing from two influential emotion theories, we argue that people's affect relation will shift from independence to stronger bipolarity when they encounter events or situations that activate a personally relevant concern. We find evidence for this idea in an ESM study, in which we tracked positive and negative emotional trajectories of a large group of Belgian first-year university students around the time they received their exam results, an event of potential great emotional impact. We suggest that flexible changes in the affect relation may function as an emotional compass by signaling personally relevant information, and create a motivational push to respond to these meaningful events in an adaptive manner. Finally, in Chapter 5, we adopt a social focus on the relation between positive and negative feelings. We argue that the societal pressure to pursue positive emotions, may also convey the message that negative feelings are abnormal and unwanted. In turn, this denouncement of negative affect may painfully reveal a discrepancy between depressed individuals' actual emotional states and what society deems desirable, potentially amplifying their depressive symptoms. We find evidence for this idea in an online daily diary study, in which we show that experiencing social pressure not to feel anxious or depressed predicts increases in people's depressive symptoms, but not vice versa.status: publishe

What's in a feeling? Decomposing global momentary emotional states into domain evaluations.

Data, Material & Syntaxe

Perceiving social pressure not to feel negative is linked to a more negative self-concept.

The current cultural standard in western societies expects people to be happy and not sad. While the pursuit of positive emotion is strongly encouraged in modern societal discourse, occasionally feeling negative is easily considered maladaptive or abnormal. It is in our human nature to comply with social expectations, and the extent to which we are able to do so has important consequences for how we view or present ourselves, generally referred to as our self-concept. Here, we investigate how the perception of the societal norm to avoid negative emotions relates to people’s self-concept. In an online survey (n = 98), we assessed people’s perceived social expectancies not to experience feelings such as anxiety or depression. We evaluated the emotional quality of participants’ self-concept via an open-response 15-statements task in which they freely described themselves, and from which we extracted the positive and negative emotion words using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count software. We found that people’s perceived social expectancies not to experience negative affect related to more negative and less positive self-descriptions. Furthermore, multiple linear regression revealed that this association was independent of people’s desire to socially conform, but a function of their actual emotion/symptom levels. Together, these findings further support the premise that today’s societal standard to avoid negative affect is unattainable, inevitably disclosing discrepancies between people’s actual occasional negative feelings and the desired emotion norm. Because this process is associated with negative self-evaluations, this may lead to an ironic amplification of these unwanted negative states.status: Published onlin

For Better or for Worse? Visualizing Previous Intensity Levels Improves Emotion (Dynamic) Measurement in Experience Sampling

It is a long known reality that humans have difficulty to accurately rate the absolute intensity of internal experiences, yet the predominant way experience sampling (ESM) researchers assess participants’ momentary emotion levels is by means of an absolute measurement scale. In a daily-life experiment (n = 178), we evaluate the efficacy of two alternative measurement methods that solicit a simpler, relative emotional evaluation: (1) the visualization of a relative anchor point on the absolute rating scale that depicts people’s previous emotion rating, and (2) the phrasing of relative emotion items that ask for a comparison with earlier emotion levels by means of a relative rating scale. Using six quality criteria relevant for ESM, we conclude that the use of a visual ‘Last’ anchor significantly improves emotion measurement in daily life: (a) Theoretically, this method has the best perceived user experience, which suggests that it better aligns with people’s emotional rating experience. Methodologically, this type of measurement generates ESM time series that (b) carried a stronger emotional signal, (c) exhibited less measurement error, produced person-level emotion dynamic measures that were (d) more stable, and generally showed stronger (e) unique and (f) incremental relations with external criteria like neuroticism and borderline personality. In sum, we see great value in the addition of a relative ‘Last’ anchor to the absolute measurement scales of future ESM studies on emotions, as it structures the ambiguous rating space and introduces more standardization within and between individuals. In contrast, using relatively phrased emotion items is not recommended

Perceiving societal pressure to be happy is linked to poor well‑being, especially in happy nations

Happiness is a valuable experience, and societies want their citizens to be happy. Although this societal commitment seems laudable, overly emphasizing positivity (versus negativity) may create an unattainable emotion norm that ironically compromises individual well-being. In this multi-national study (40 countries; 7,443 participants), we investigate how societal pressure to be happy and not sad predicts emotional, cognitive and clinical indicators of well-being around the world, and examine how these relations differ as a function of countries’ national happiness levels (collected from the World Happiness Report). Although detrimental well-being associations manifest for an average country, the strength of these relations varies across countries. People’s felt societal pressure to be happy and not sad is particularly linked to poor well-being in countries with a higher World Happiness Index. Although the cross-sectional nature of our work prohibits causal conclusions, our findings highlight the correlational link between social emotion valuation and individual well-being, and suggest that high national happiness levels may have downsides for some