The political is personal: The costs of daily politics.

Politics and its controversies have permeated everyday life, but the daily impact of politics on the general public is largely unknown. Here, we apply an affective science framework to understand how the public experiences daily politics in a two-part examination. We first used longitudinal, daily diary methods to track two samples of U.S. participants as they experienced daily political events across 2 weeks (Study 1: N = 198, observations = 2,167) and 3 weeks (Study 2: N = 811, observations = 12,790) to explore how these events permeated people's lives and how people coped with that influence. In both diary studies, daily political events consistently not only evoked negative emotions, which corresponded to worse psychological and physical well-being, but also greater motivation to take political action (e.g., volunteer, protest) aimed at changing the political system that evoked these emotions in the first place. Understandably, people frequently tried to regulate their politics-induced emotions, and regulating these emotions using effective cognitive strategies (reappraisal and distraction) predicted greater well-being, but also weaker motivation to take action. Although people protected themselves from the emotional impact of politics, frequently used regulation strategies came with a trade-off between well-being and action. Second, we conducted experimental studies where we manipulated exposure to day-to-day politics (Study 3, N = 922), and the use of various emotion regulation strategies in response (Study 4, N = 1,277), and found causal support for the central findings of Studies 1-2. Overall, this research highlights how politics can be a chronic stressor in people's daily lives, underscoring the far-reaching influence politicians have beyond the formal powers endowed unto them. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

The Insulating Function of Sleep for Well-being: Daily Sleep Quality Attenuates the Link Between Current Affect and Global Life Satisfaction.

Transient affect can be tightly linked with people's global life satisfaction (i.e., affect globalizing). This volatile judgment style leaves life satisfaction vulnerable to the inevitable highs and lows of everyday life, and has been associated with lower psychological health. The present study examines a potentially fundamental but untested regulatory role of sleep: insulating people's global life satisfaction from the affective highs and lows of daily life. We tested this hypothesis in two daily diary samples (N 1 = 3,011 daily diary observations of 274 participants and N 2 = 12,740 daily diary observations of 811 participants). Consistent with preregistered hypotheses, following nights of reported high-quality sleep, the link between current affect and global life satisfaction was attenuated (i.e., lower affect globalizing). Sleep-based interventions are broadly useful for improving psychological health and the current findings suggest another avenue by which such interventions may improve well-being: by providing crucial protection against the risks associated with affect globalizing. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s42761-021-00092-4.

Coping With Health Threats: The Costs and Benefits of Managing Emotions.

How people respond to health threats can influence their own health and, when people are facing communal risks, even their community's health. We propose that people commonly respond to health threats by managing their emotions with cognitive strategies such as reappraisal, which can reduce fear and protect mental health. However, because fear can also motivate health behaviors, reducing fear may also jeopardize health behaviors. In two diverse U.S. samples (N = 1,241) tracked across 3 months, sequential and cross-lagged panel mediation models indicated that reappraisal predicted lower fear about an ongoing health threat (COVID-19) and, in turn, better mental health but fewer recommended physical health behaviors. This trade-off was not inevitable, however: The use of reappraisal to increase socially oriented positive emotions predicted better mental health without jeopardizing physical health behaviors. Examining the costs and benefits of how people cope with health threats is essential for promoting better health outcomes for individuals and communities.

Profiles in empathy: Different empathic responses to emotional and physical suffering.

Empathy often occurs when individuals witness another suffer. Researchers who study empathy have tried to identify reliable behavioral outcomes, affective responses, and physiological changes associated with its experience. However to date, these markers of empathy have remained elusive. We propose that failing to take into account the features of the suffering that elicited the empathy has contributed to this problem. We hypothesized that emotional and physical suffering generate diverging profiles of empathy with different behavioral, affective, and physiological markers. We first examined how observer's rated 75 different types of suffering. Ratings produced 2 independent clusters-primarily emotional and primarily physical, which classified 80% of suffering events (Study 1). Next we measured behavioral, affective, and physiological markers of empathy for emotional and physical suffering. In a 2-step exploratory (Study 2a) and confirmatory (Study 2b; preregistered) process, participants generated open-ended behavioral responses to suffering scenarios, which were coded, classified into thematic categories, and presented to new participants. We found that emotional suffering elicited more comforting and interpersonal emotion regulation behaviors in others, whereas physical suffering elicited more emergency mobilization behaviors. In Study 3, participants viewed pictures of suffering. Self-reports and coded expressions of compassion were stronger for emotional suffering; anxiety and distress were stronger for physical suffering. In Study 4, participants watched videos of suffering. Emotional and physical suffering elicited increased parasympathetic and sympathetic activation, though coactivation was greater for physical suffering. This work generates a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of empathy, which addresses current debates and reconciles inconsistencies in its conceptualization. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).