Unpacking the pursuit of happiness: Being concerned about happiness but not aspiring to happiness is linked with negative meta-emotions and worse well-being.

Previous work suggests that sometimes the more people value happiness, the less happy they are. For whom and why is this the case? To answer these questions, we examined a model of happiness pursuit that disentangles two previously conflated individual differences related to valuing happiness. The first individual difference operates at the strength of the value itself and involves viewing happiness as a very important goal (i.e., aspiring to happiness). The second individual difference occurs later in the process of pursuing happiness and involves judging one's levels of happiness (i.e., concern about happiness). This model predicts that aspiring to happiness is relatively innocuous. Conversely, being concerned about happiness leads people to judge their happiness, thereby infusing negativity (i.e., negative meta-emotions) into potentially positive events, which, in turn, interferes with well-being. We tested these hypotheses using cross-sectional, daily-diary, and longitudinal methods in student and community samples, collected between 2009 and 2020, which are diverse in gender, ethnicity, age, and geographic location (Ntotal = 1,815). In Studies 1a and 1b, aspiring to happiness and concern about happiness represented distinct individual differences. In Study 2, concern about happiness (but not aspiring to happiness) was associated with lower well-being cross-sectionally and longitudinally. In Study 3, these links between concern about happiness and worse well-being were partially accounted for by experiencing greater negative meta-emotions during daily positive events. These findings suggest that highly valuing happiness is not inherently problematic; however, concern and judgment about one's happiness can undermine it. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Emotion Controllability Beliefs and Young People's Anxiety and Depression Symptoms: A Systematic Review.

Emotion regulation is a powerful predictor of youth mental health and a crucial ingredient of interventions. A growing body of evidence indicates that the beliefs individuals hold about the extent to which emotions are controllable (emotion controllability beliefs) influence both the degree and the ways in which they regulate emotions. A systematic review was conducted that investigated the associations between emotion controllability beliefs and youth anxiety and depression symptoms. The search identified 21 peer-reviewed publications that met the inclusion criteria. Believing that emotions are relatively controllable was associated with fewer anxiety and depression symptoms, in part because these beliefs were associated with more frequent use of adaptive emotion regulation strategies. These findings support theoretical models linking emotion controllability beliefs with anxiety and depression symptoms via emotion regulation strategies that target emotional experience, like reappraisal. Taken together, the review findings demonstrate that emotion controllability beliefs matter for youth mental health. Understanding emotion controllability beliefs is of prime importance for basic science and practice, as it will advance understanding of mental health and provide additional targets for managing symptoms of anxiety and depression in young people.

Child inhibited temperament and caregiver distraction encouragement jointly predict children's delay of gratification competencies.

A cool attentional focus during the classic delay of gratification (DG) task involves shifting attention away from the emotion-arousing features and is a key mechanism that underlies children's ability to resist temptation and wait. Yet, we know relatively little about what gives rise to individual differences in cool focus in the first place. The current study (N = 162, Mage = 6.86 years) addressed this question by focusing on key aspects of child temperament (i.e., behavioral inhibition, BI) and caregiver emotion socialization (i.e., distraction encouragement) as joint predictors of cool focus. We theorized that because children are left alone in an unfamiliar environment for an undefined duration, the DG task would be especially taxing for children higher in BI, hindering their ability to deploy a cool focus and wait. We also reasoned that caregiver encouragement of distraction would serve as a protective factor by allowing children higher in BI to more easily activate a cool focus even when experiencing a taxing task. Results were partially consistent with these hypotheses, shedding new light on precursors to a central ingredient of DG ability.

When daily emotions spill into life satisfaction: Age differences in emotion globalizing.

Although the objective conditions of people's lives are fairly stable from day to day, daily life can feel like an emotional rollercoaster. For some people, life satisfaction hitches a ride on the emotional rollercoaster (i.e., momentary emotions spill over into broader evaluations of life). The extent to which positive and negative emotions spill over into life satisfaction is referred to as positive and negative emotion globalizing. Initial evidence suggests that emotion globalizing varies between individuals and is linked to a maladaptive psychological profile. Integrating a lifespan perspective, this is the first study to identify and describe age differences in emotion globalizing using data from two adult community samples (Study 1: N = 133 women, age range = 23-78; Study 2: N = 137, age range = 18-95). Further, we tested key boundary conditions of emotion globalizing by examining two types of emotions (i.e., current or after most stressful event of the day) and two types of satisfaction (i.e., overall life satisfaction [life satisfaction] or current day satisfaction [day satisfaction]). Specifically, we investigated how younger and older adults differed in the associations of current emotions with life satisfaction (i.e., emotion globalizing; Study 1), stressor-related emotions with life satisfaction (i.e., stressor-related emotion globalizing; Study 1), and stressor-related emotions with day satisfaction (Study 2). Results revealed that older (compared to younger) adults exhibited less negative (but not positive) emotion globalizing and stressor-related emotion globalizing. We found no age differences in the association between stressor-related emotions and day satisfaction. These findings extend insights into emotion globalizing and inform theories of emotional aging. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Judging emotions as good or bad: Individual differences and associations with psychological health.

People differ in their initial emotional responses to events, and we are beginning to understand these responses and their pervasive implications for psychological health. However, people also differ in how they think about and react to their initial emotions (i.e., emotion judgments). In turn, how people judge their emotions-as predominantly positive or negative-may have crucial implications for psychological health. Across five MTurk and undergraduate samples collected between 2017 and 2022 (total N = 1,647), we investigated the nature of habitual emotion judgments (Aim 1) and their associations with psychological health (Aim 2). In Aim 1, we found four distinct habitual emotion judgments that differ according to the valence of the judgment (positive or negative) and the valence of the emotion being judged (positive or negative). Individual differences in habitual emotion judgments were moderately stable across time and were associated with, but not redundant with, conceptually related constructs (e.g., affect valuation, emotion preferences, stress mindsets, meta-emotions) and broader traits (i.e., extraversion, neuroticism, trait emotions). In Aim 2, positive judgments of positive emotions were uniquely associated with better psychological health and negative judgments of negative emotions were uniquely associated with worse psychological health concurrently and prospectively, above and beyond the other types of emotion judgments, and above and beyond conceptually related constructs and broader traits. This research gives insight into how people judge their emotions, how these judgments relate to other emotion-related constructs, and their implications for psychological health. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Individual differences in social power: Links with beliefs about emotion and emotion regulation.

OBJECTIVE: People differ in how they regulate their emotions, and how they do so is guided by their beliefs about emotion. We propose that social power-one's perceived influence over others-relates to one's beliefs about emotion and to emotion regulation. More powerful people are characterized as authentic and uninhibited, which should translate to the belief that one should not have to control one's emotions and, in turn, less suppression and more acceptance. More powerful people are also characterized as self-efficacious and confident, which should translate to the belief that one can control one's emotions and, in turn, more reappraisal and acceptance. METHOD: Two preregistered studies using four samples (Ntotal  = 1286) tested these hypotheses using cross-sectional and longitudinal surveys as well as diaries. RESULTS: In Study 1, power related to beliefs about emotion and emotion regulation in hypothesized ways. Study 2 also largely supported the hypotheses: The belief that one should not have to control one's emotions accounted for the links between power and suppression and acceptance, whereas the belief that one can control one's emotions accounted for the link between power and reappraisal. CONCLUSION: Power and emotion regulation are interconnected, in part because of their links with beliefs about emotions.

Psychological Resilience: An Affect-Regulation Framework.

Exposure to adversity (e.g., poverty, bereavement) is a robust predictor of disruptions in psychological functioning. However, people vary greatly in their responses to adversity; some experience severe long-term disruptions, others experience minimal disruptions or even improvements. We refer to the latter outcomes-faring better than expected given adversity-as psychological resilience. Understanding what processes explain resilience has critical theoretical and practical implications. Yet, psychology's understanding of resilience is incomplete, for two reasons: (a) We lack conceptual clarity, and (b) two major approaches to resilience-the stress and coping approach and the emotion and emotion-regulation approach-have limitations and are relatively isolated from one another. To address these two obstacles,we first discuss conceptual questions about resilience. Next, we offer an integrative affect-regulation framework that capitalizes on complementary strengths of both approaches. This framework advances our understanding of resilience by integrating existing findings, highlighting gaps in knowledge, and guiding future research.

Short-term implications of long-term thinking: Temporal distancing and emotional responses to daily stressors.

Temporal distancing (TD) is a promising yet understudied emotion regulation strategy that involves reflecting on how one will feel much later in the future. Although limited, the available evidence suggests that TD is a beneficial way to appraise negative events. Experimental studies have demonstrated causality: Situational use of TD (e.g., when thinking about a negative event) confers short-term emotional benefits in the laboratory. In addition, correlational studies show that habitual use predicts better long-term well-being. However, several open questions remain. First, we do not fully understand associations between habitual TD and emotions in daily life. Second, we do not fully understand daily TD, either on average across days or fluctuating within person. We conducted an 8-day diary study to test associations between TD and emotional responses to daily stressful events for three distinct measures at two levels of analysis: habitual TD assessed with a survey, average daily TD across days, and within-person fluctuations in TD across days (N = 155 participants, 837 observations). TD was associated with lower negative emotion at the within-person level and with greater positive emotion at both levels. Overall, these findings suggest that TD-on average and fluctuating within person-is associated with a beneficial pattern of daily emotional experiences, which may support overall well-being. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Spontaneous suppression in dating couples: Social and physiological correlates of suppressing negative and positive emotions during negative and positive conversations.

Suppression (i.e., inhibiting one's emotional expression) has typically been associated with social and physiological costs. However, recent theorizing calls into question the inevitability of these costs. The present study takes a more nuanced approach and examines the social and physiological correlates of spontaneous (i.e., uninstructed) suppression when considering two potentially critical factors: the valence of the suppressed emotions (i.e., negative vs. positive) and the valence of the emotional context in which emotions are suppressed (i.e., negative conversation vs. positive conversation). Specifically, dating couples (N = 196 couples) completed both a negatively-valenced and a positively-valenced conversation in the laboratory while their autonomic-physiological responses were recorded. After each conversation, participants rated 1) the extent to which they had suppressed their negative and positive emotions, 2) the quality of the conversation, and 3) how connected they felt with their partner. We used Actor-Partner Interdependence Models to estimate actor effects (e.g., association of one's own suppression and one's own connectedness) and partner effects (e.g., association of one's partner's suppression and one's own connectedness). Suppression was associated with lower conversation quality and connectedness for the actors but largely not for the partners, regardless of the valence of the suppressed emotions and of the context, even when adjusting for felt emotion. Additionally, suppression was consistently not associated with physiological responses of actors or partners. Together, these findings suggest that, during emotional conversations with one's romantic partner, spontaneous (unlike instructed) suppression is associated with social but not physiological costs for the self but not one's partner.

Perceived discrimination, model minority stereotyping, and anxiety symptoms in chinese-heritage college students.

OBJECTIVE: Perceived racial discrimination has been associated with elevated anxiety symptoms. Less is known about the mental health implications of another race-related stressor, model minority stereotyping, which is a salient experience for Chinese-heritage youth. In addition, despite theoretical considerations and indirect empirical evidence suggesting that greater autonomic nervous system (ANS) reactivity may index sensitivity to race-related stressors, ANS reactivity has not been examined as a moderator of links between race-related stressors and mental health. The present study investigated cross-sectional associations between self-reports of two salient race-related stressors (perceived discrimination and model minority stereotyping) and anxiety symptoms in Chinese-heritage youth, as well as whether ANS reactivity moderates these relationships. METHOD: Chinese-heritage U.S. college students (N = 198, 55.6% female, 18-25 years, Mage = 20.0 years) self-reported experiences with race-related stressors. ANS reactivity (respiratory sinus arrhythmia [RSA] and pre-ejection period [PEP]) to a video depicting discrimination was collected on a subsample of participants (N = 103). RESULTS: Although both race-related stressors were positively correlated with anxiety symptoms, only perceived discrimination was uniquely associated with anxiety symptoms. Further, RSA (but not PEP) reactivity moderated the relationship between perceived discrimination and anxiety symptoms, such that associations were stronger for participants with greater RSA withdrawal. CONCLUSIONS: Our results replicate findings on the discrimination-anxiety link in Chinese-heritage college students, and show that model minority stereotyping is correlated with greater anxiety symptoms. Findings suggest that individuals with heightened RSA reactivity may be especially vulnerable to the adverse effect of discrimination. These findings have implications for mental health services for Chinese-heritage U.S. college students. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Prospective associations between emotion regulation and depressive symptoms among Mexican-origin adolescents.

Reappraisal (reconstruing emotional experiences to alter their impact) and suppression (inhibiting emotionally expressive behavior) are emotion-regulation strategies with important implications for depression. While reappraisal generally predicts lower depressive symptoms, suppression generally predicts higher depressive symptoms. Because cultural factors can influence the processes involved in these links and because adolescence-especially for ethnic minority youth-brings particular emotional challenges, it's critical to investigate these links among Mexican-origin adolescents. However, research examining emotion regulation among Mexican-origin individuals is scarce and generally limited to cross-sectional designs. Thus, we examined prospective associations between reappraisal and suppression (assessed at age 17) and 2 facets of depressive symptoms (anhedonia and general distress) over 3 years (assessed at ages 16, 18, and 19) among 228 Mexican-origin adolescents. Latent growth curve models indicated that reappraisal was associated with lower anhedonia at baseline (age 16) and lower anhedonia over time, whereas suppression predicted greater anhedonia at baseline but not change over time. Consistent with the Mexican cultural value of simpatía, which emphasizes expressing positive emotions and inhibiting negative emotions, suppression of positive emotions was associated with greater anhedonia over time whereas suppression of negative emotions was associated with lower anhedonia over time. However, neither associated with anhedonia at baseline. Reappraisal and suppression were not associated with distress symptoms, and no effects were moderated by familism, household income, gender, or child nativity. The anhedonia results suggest that the benefits of reappraisal extend to Mexican-origin adolescents, but the effects of suppression may depend upon emotional valence in this group. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Links Between Emotion Regulation Strategies and Internalizing and Externalizing Problems in Chinese American Adolescents.

Adolescents from immigrant families are at risk for psychological health issues due to acculturative stress and the marked increases in internalizing and externalizing problems accompanying adolescence. Emotion Regulation (ER) may be an important protective resource for these adolescents. The present study tested the links between ER and internalizing and externalizing problems in 131 first- and second-generation Chinese American adolescents. Adolescents' reappraisal was associated with less internalizing and externalizing problems; adolescents' suppression was associated with more internalizing and externalizing problems. These links were somewhat more pronounced in adolescents high in American cultural orientation as well as in adolescents low in Chinese cultural orientation. Our results advance our understanding of the links between ER and psychological health in Chinese American youth.

Emotion regulation in the face of loss: How detachment, positive reappraisal, and acceptance shape experiences, physiology, and perceptions in late life.

How individuals regulate emotions in the face of loss has important consequences for well-being and health, but we know little about which emotion regulation strategies are most effective for older adults for whom loss is ubiquitous. The present laboratory-based study examined effects of three emotion regulation strategies (i.e., detachment, positive reappraisal, or acceptance in response to film clips depicting loss) on subjective emotional experiences, physiology, and perceptions of emotion regulation success and motivation in healthy older adults (N = 129, age range = 64-83). Results showed that, first, detachment decreased emotional experiences across the board; positive reappraisal decreased negative and increased positive emotional experiences; while acceptance did not alter emotional experiences. Second, detachment decreased physiological arousal (driven by increases in interbeat interval and decreases in respiration rate) whereas positive reappraisal and acceptance did not alter physiological arousal compared with "just watch" trials. Third, individuals felt most successful and willing to put forth their best effort when implementing acceptance, while they felt least successful and least willing to put forth their best effort for positive reappraisal. These findings illuminate longstanding discussions regarding how individuals can best regulate emotions in the face of loss. They show that older adults can regulate their emotional experiences and (to a lesser extent) their physiology with detachment numbing emotional experiences and decreasing physiological arousal; positive reappraisal brightening emotional experiences; and acceptance resulting in the highest perceptions of success and motivation. Thus, each emotion regulation strategy appears to be most effective in specific domains for older adults. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Daily Stressors, Emotion Dynamics, and Inflammation in the MIDUS Cohort.

BACKGROUND: The current study (1) examined links between daily stressors and inflammation and (2) tested whether negative emotion dynamics (emotional variability) is one pathway through which stressors are linked to inflammation. METHOD: A cross-sectional sample of 986 adults (aged 35-86 years, 57% female) from MIDUS reported daily stressor frequency and severity and negative emotions on 8 consecutive nights. Negative emotion variability (intraindividual standard deviation), controlling for overall mean level (intraindividual mean), was the focus of the current study. Interleukin-6 (IL-6) and C-reactive protein (CRP) were assayed from blood drawn at a clinic visit. Regression models adjusted for demographics, health factors, and the time between assessments. RESULTS: More severe daily stressors were associated with higher CRP, but this effect was accounted for by covariates. More frequent daily stressors were associated with lower IL-6 and CRP. In follow-up analyses, significant interactions between stressor severity and frequency suggested that participants with lower stressor severity and higher stressor frequency had the lowest levels of IL-6 and CRP, whereas those with higher stressor severity had the highest levels of IL-6 and CRP, regardless of frequency. Daily stressor frequency and severity were positively associated with negative emotion variability, but variability was not linearly associated with inflammation and did not operate as a mediator. CONCLUSION: Among midlife and older adults, daily stressor frequency and severity may interact and synergistically associate with inflammatory markers, potentially due to these adults being advantaged in other ways related to lower inflammation, or in a pattern aligning with hormetic stress, where frequent but manageable stressors may yield physiological benefits, or both. Negative emotion variability does not operate as a mediator. Additional work is needed to reliably measure and test other emotion dynamic metrics that may contribute to inflammation.

"I feel you": Greater linkage between friends' physiological responses and emotional experience is associated with greater empathic accuracy.

How do people come to know others' feelings? One idea is that affective processes (e.g., physiological responses) play an important role, leading to the prediction that linkage between one's physiological responses and others' emotions relates to one's ability to know how others feel (i.e., empathic accuracy). Participants (N = 96, 48 female friend pairs) completed a stressful speech task and then provided continuous ratings of their own (as "targets") and their friend's (as "perceivers") emotional experience for the video-taped speeches. We measured physiology-physiology linkage (linkage between perceivers' and targets' physiology), physiology-experience linkage (linkage between perceivers' physiology and targets' experience), and empathic accuracy (linkage between perceivers' ratings of targets' experience and targets' ratings of their experience). Physiology-experience (but not physiology-physiology) linkage was associated with greater empathic accuracy even when controlling for key potential confounds (random linkage, targets' and perceivers' emotional reactivity, and relationship closeness). Results suggest that physiological responses play a role in empathic accuracy.

Sex differences in emotional concordance.

Emotions involve response synchronization across experiential, physiological, and behavioral systems, referred to as concordance or coherence. Women are thought to be more emotionally aware and expressive than men and may therefore display stronger response concordance; however, research on this topic is scant. Using a random-order film-average design, we assessed concordance among experiential (arousal, valence), autonomic (electrodermal activity, heart rate, preejection period, respiratory sinus arrhythmia), respiratory (respiratory rate), and behavioral (corrugator and zygomatic electromyography) responses to 15 two-minute films varying in valence and arousal. We then calculated for each participant and pair of measures a within-subject correlation index using averages from the 15 films. Pronounced individual concordance of up to 0.9 was observed. Arousal-physiology and valence-behavior concordances were particularly pronounced. Women displayed higher concordance than men for almost all pairs of measures. Findings indicate stronger psychophysiological response coupling in women than men and provide novel insights into affective differences between the sexes.

Maladaptive behavior and affect regulation: A functionalist perspective.

Clinical science has benefited tremendously from taking seriously the proposition that putatively maladaptive behaviors serve psychological functions, prominently among these affect regulation (AR). These functionalist accounts have not only advanced basic clinical science, but also formed the bedrock for the development of effective treatments. Drawing heavily on reinforcement learning theory, we aim to elucidate functional relationships between maladaptive behavior and AR. Specifically, we take the view that maladaptive behaviors are frequently motivated and reinforced by hedonic AR functions (i.e., decreasing negative affect and increasing positive affect) but are also susceptible to becoming stimulus-bound habits. We review empirical evidence related to one such behavior, nonsuicidal self-injury. We close with a brief reflection on future directions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Depressive symptoms and deficits in stress-reactive negative, positive, and within-emotion-category differentiation: A daily diary study.

OBJECTIVE: The present research aimed to better understand deficits in emotion differentiation that accompany depressive symptoms. Depressive symptoms have been associated with more undifferentiated negative emotion experiences-experiencing multiple negative emotions simultaneously. We extend previous research by asking: (a) Are depressive symptoms and negative and positive emotion differentiation related above and beyond emotion intensity? (b) Are deficits in negative emotion differentiation specific to distinct categories of negative emotions (sadness, guilt, anger, and anxiety)? and (c) Do age or gender predict emotion differentiation or its associations with depressive symptoms? METHOD: In 220 community participants (59% female; 21-60 years), we assessed depressive symptoms using surveys and emotion differentiation using daily diary emotion ratings in response to daily stressful events. RESULTS: Greater depressive symptoms were associated with lower negative, but not positive, emotion differentiation, above and beyond emotion intensity. Depressive symptoms were specifically related to lower differentiation among sadness-related emotions, and this sadness-specific deficit accounted for the deficit in negative emotion differentiation. Age and gender did not predict or moderate associations with emotion differentiation. CONCLUSION: Depressive symptoms are associated with undifferentiated negative emotions above and beyond emotion intensity, and this association appears to be driven by undifferentiated sadness-related emotions, across gender and age.