Ilios Kotsou

Increasing emotional competence improves psychological and physical well-being, social relationships, and employability

This study builds on earlier work showing that adult emotional competencies (EC) could be improved through a relatively brief training. In a set of 2 controlled experimental studies, the authors investigated whether developing EC could lead to improved emotional functioning; long-term personality changes; and important positive implications for physical, psychological, social, and work adjustment. Results of Study 1 showed that 18 hr of training with e-mail follow-up was sufficient to significantly improve emotion regulation, emotion understanding, and overall EC. These changes led in turn to long-term significant increases in extraversion and agreeableness as well as a decrease in neuroticism. Results of Study 2 showed that the development of EC brought about positive changes in psychological well-being, subjective health, quality of social relationships, and employability. The effect sizes were sufficiently large for the changes to be considered as meaningful in peoples lives.

Emotional plasticity : conditions and effects of improving emotional competence in adulthood

This study aimed to investigate (a) whether it is possible to increase emotional competence (EC) in adulthood; (b) whether this improvement results in better mental, physical, and social adjustment; (c) whether this improvement can be maintained 1 year later; and (d) whether these benefits are accompanied by a reduction in stress-hormone secretion (i.e., cortisol). One hundred and thirty-two participants were randomly assigned to an EC-enhancing intervention (in group format) or to a control group. Participants in the intervention group underwent a specifically designed 15-hr intervention targeting the 5 core emotional competencies, complemented with a 4-week e-mail follow-up. Results reveal that the level of emotional competencies increased significantly in the intervention group in contrast with the control group. This increase resulted in lower cortisol secretion, enhanced subjective and physical well-being, as well as improved quality of social and marital relationships in the intervention group. No significant change occurred in the control group. Peer reports on EC and quality of relationships confirmed these results. These data suggest that emotional competencies can be improved, with effective benefits on personal and interpersonal functioning lasting for at least 1 year. The theoretical implications of these results as well as their practical implications for the construction and the development of effective emotional competencies interventions are discussed.

Self-Compassion Scale (SCS): Psychometric Properties of The French Translation and Its Relations with Psychological Well-Being, Affect and Depression.

Over the past few years, the topic of self-compassion has attracted increasing attention from both scientific and clinical fields. The Self-Compassion Scale (SCS) was created to specifically capture this way of being kind and understanding towards oneself in moments of turmoil. In this article, we present a French adaptation of the SCS. We first explore the psychometric properties of this adaptation and then investigate its relation to psychological well-being. As in the original version of the SCS, the French adaptation has a strong 6-factor structure but a weaker hierarchical second order structure. However the bi-factor model yields a good omega index suggesting the relevance of a single score accounting for self-compassion. Moreover, there was a relation between the SCS and classical outcomes such as a positive relation with psychological well-being and negative relation with depressive symptoms. We then hypothesized that self-compassion would have a moderating role on the relation between affect and depression. This hypothesis was confirmed: expressing negative affect is correlated with depressive symptoms; however, being kind with oneself lowers depressive symptoms even when expressing negative affect. In conclusion, this research presents a valid self-compassion measure for French-speaking researchers and clinicians and outlines the need for further research on the concept of self-compassion.

Acceptance alone is a better predictor of psychopathology and well-being than emotional competence, emotion regulation and mindfulness

Emotional competence, emotion regulation, mindfulness and acceptance have all been strongly associated to emotional disorders and psychological well-being in multiple studies. However little research has compared the unique predictive ability of these different constructs. We hypothesised that they will all share a large proportion of common variance and that when compared to the broader constructs emotional competence, emotion regulation and mindfulness, acceptance alone would predict a larger proportion of unique variance METHODS: 228 participants from a community sample completed anonymously measures of anxiety, depression, happiness, acceptance, mindfulness, emotional competence and emotion regulation. We then ran multiple regressions to assess and compare the predictive ability of these different constructs. RESULTS For measures of psychological distress, the acceptance measure uniquely accounted for between 4 and 30 times the variance that the emotional competence, emotion regulation and mindfulness measures did. LIMITATIONS These results are based on cross-sectional designs and non-clinical samples, longitudinal and experimental studies as clinical samples may be useful in order to assess the potential protective power of acceptance over time. Another limitation is the use of self-report questionnaires. CONCLUSIONS Results confirmed our hypothesis, supporting the research on the importance of acceptance as a central factor in the understanding of the onset and maintenance of emotional disorders.

Joint effect of alexithymia and mood on the categorization of nonverbal emotional vocalizations.

The role of stable factors, such as alexithymia (i.e., difficulties identifying and expressing feelings, externally oriented cognitive style), or temporary factors, such as affective states (mood), on emotion perception has been widely investigated in the literature. However, little is known about the separate or joint effect of the alexithymia level and affective states (positive affectivity, negative affectivity) on the recognition of nonverbal emotional vocalizations (NEV) (e.g., laughs, cries, or sighs). In this study, participants had to categorize NEV communicating 10 emotions by selecting the correct verbal emotional label. Results show that the level of alexithymia is negatively correlated to the capacity to accurately categorize negative vocalizations, and more particularly sad NEV. On the other hand, negative affectivity appeared negatively correlated with the ability to accurately categorize NEV in general, and negative vocalizations in particular. After splitting the results by the alexithymia level (high vs. low scorers), significant associations between mood and accuracy rates were found in the group of high alexithymia scorers only. These findings support the idea that alexithymic features act across sensory modalities and suggest a mood-interference effect that would be stronger in those individuals.

The Influence of Family Dynamics On Eating Disorders and Their Consequence On Resilience: A Mediation Model

ABSTRACT The objective of this research is to test a mediation model between family dynamics and eating disorders (ED) through resilience skills. A non-clinical sample of 143 young women (Mage D 19.9 years, SD D 4.2) was recruited. All participants completed three valid questionnaires: The Eating Attitudes Test (EAT 26), the Family Adaptability and Cohesion Scale III (FACES III), and the Resilience Scale for Adults (RSA). The results are consistent with this mediation model: resilience increases with balanced family dynamics. Resilience mediates the link between family dynamics and occurrence of ED.

Perspectives on resilience : trait or aptitude ?

In this paper, we discuss various issues related to the concept of resilience, which is conventionally defined as a dynamic process allowing for a positive adaptation in a context of significant adversity. First, we try to draw the readers attention to the importance of the concept of resilience in terms of public health. Second, we address the difficulty of measuring resilience in a relevant and operational manner. Third, we then address the question of whether resilience can be conceived only in the context of a confrontation with trauma, or whether its application can be relevant to the everyday nontraumatic adversity. In this regard, we introduce and define another coping strategy which is the Sense of Coherence (SOC). Fourth, we discuss the nature of resilience, that is to say, whether it should be considered as a personality trait or as an aptitude. We try to show that this problem arises from the difficulty to specify the emotional processes involved in resilience. Finally, we propose future research perspectives that should allow us to better understand the concept of resilience.

Robust, replicable, and theoretically-grounded: A response to Brown and Coyne’s (2017) commentary on the relationship between emodiversity and health

In 2014 in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, we reported 2 studies demonstrating that the diversity of emotions that people experience—as measured by the Shannon-Wiener entropy index—was an independent predictor of mental and physical health, over and above the effect of mean levels of emotion. Brown and Coyne (2017) questioned both our use of Shannon’s entropy and our analytic approach. We thank Brown and Coyne for their interest in our research; however, both their theoretical and empirical critiques do not undermine the central theoretical tenets and empirical findings of our research. We present an in-depth examination that reveals that our findings are statistically robust, replicable, and reflect a theoretically grounded phenomenon with real-world implications.