Tendency to Share Positive Emotions Buffers Loneliness-Related Negativity in the Context of Shared Adversity.

Loneliness is associated with adverse outcomes, and the COVID-19 pandemic threatened to increase loneliness. How loneliness-related outcomes unfold, though, varies across individuals. Individuals' sense of social connectedness and engagement with others to regulate emotional experiences (interpersonal emotion regulation; IER) may modulate loneliness-related outcomes. Individuals failing to maintain social connectedness and/or regulate emotions may be at heightened risk. We assessed how loneliness, social connectedness, and IER related to valence bias, a tendency to categorize ambiguity as more positive or negative. Loneliness was associated with a more negative valence bias among individuals reporting above average social connectedness but who shared positive emotion less often (z=-3.19, p=.001). These findings suggest that sharing positive emotional experiences may buffer loneliness-related outcomes during shared adverse experiences.

Individual differences in appraisals of emotional ambiguity: Biological, psychological, and social predictors

Uncertainty is ubiquitous in life, and its impacts are seen in decision-making across diverse contexts (e.g., financial, health, and interpersonal/social). As a result, individual differences in response to emotional ambiguity, a special type of uncertainty, can have far-reaching impacts. A growing literature has explored these individual differences in valence bias, or the tendency to appraise ambiguous social signals as more positive or negative. Although these appraisals are generally characterized by an initial negativity, many individuals arrive at positive appraisals through regulatory processes. Chronic negativity appears to be linked to an increased risk of mood and anxiety symptoms and has spurred research assessing predictors of valence bias at the biological, psychological, and social levels, that support the overriding of initial negativity. Here, biological predictors are probed via resting-state functional connectivity, in particular among emotion regulation (i.e., amygdala and PFC) and task performance (i.e., cingulo-opercular) brain networks, which are leveraged to predict individual differences in valence bias with machine learning algorithms. Next, psychological predictors are explored in the context of a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction intervention - showing a malleability of the trait-like valence bias. Then, the broad-scale uncertainty stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic and its impacts on valence bias over the period of approximately 15 months is characterized, showing a generalized increase in negativity at the start of the pandemic but individual differences in this change after the pandemic's onset. Findings from each of these three levels of analysis are then discussed in the context of understanding sources of variability in individual differences in valence bias and improving physical and mental well-being. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

Reappraisal-but not Suppression-Tendencies Determine Negativity Bias After Laboratory and Real-World Stress Exposure.

Higher reactivity to stress exposure is associated with an increased tendency to appraise ambiguous stimuli as negative. However, it remains unknown whether tendencies to use emotion regulation strategies-such as cognitive reappraisal, which involves altering the meaning or relevance of affective stimuli-can shape individual differences regarding how stress affects perceptions of ambiguity. Here, we examined whether increased reappraisal use is one factor that can determine whether stress exposure induces increased negativity bias. In Study 1, healthy participants (n = 43) rated the valence of emotionally ambiguous (surprised) faces before and after an acute stress or control manipulation and reported reappraisal habits. Increased negativity ratings were milder for stressed individuals that reported more habitual reappraisal use. In Study 2 (n = 97), we extended this investigation to real-world perceived stress before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. We found that reappraisal tendency moderates the relationship between perceived stress and increased negativity bias. Collectively, these findings suggest that the propensity to reappraise determines negativity bias when evaluating ambiguity under stress. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42761-021-00059-5.