Madeline Lee Pe

Emotion-Network Density in Major Depressive Disorder

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a prevalent disorder involving disturbances in mood. There is still much to understand regarding precisely how emotions are disrupted in individuals with MDD. In this study, we used a network approach to examine the emotional disturbances underlying MDD. We hypothesized that compared with healthy control individuals, individuals diagnosed with MDD would be characterized by a denser emotion network, thereby indicating that their emotion system is more resistant to change. Indeed, results from a 7-day experience sampling study revealed that individuals with MDD had a denser overall emotion network than did healthy control individuals. Moreover, this difference was driven primarily by a denser negative, but not positive, network in MDD participants. These findings suggest that the disruption in emotions that characterizes depressed individuals stems from a negative emotion system that is resistant to change.

The cognitive building blocks of emotion regulation: Ability to update working memory moderates the efficacy of rumination and reappraisal on emotion.

The ability to regulate emotions is a critical component of healthy emotional functioning. Therefore, it is important to determine factors that contribute to the efficacy of emotion regulation. The present article examined whether the ability to update emotional information in working memory is a predictor of the efficacy of rumination and reappraisal on affective experience both at the trait level (Study 1) and in daily life (Study 2). In both studies, results revealed that the relationship between use of reappraisal and high arousal negative emotions was moderated by updating ability. Specifically, use of reappraisal was associated with decreased high arousal negative emotions for participants with high updating ability, while no significant relationship was found for those with low updating ability. In addition, both studies also revealed that the relationship between rumination and high arousal negative emotions was moderated by updating ability. In general, use of rumination was associated with elevated high arousal negative emotions. However, this relationship was blunted for participants with high updating ability. That is, use of rumination was associated with less elevated high arousal negative emotions for participants with high updating ability. These results identify the ability to update emotional information in working memory as a crucial process modulating the efficacy of emotion regulation efforts.

A diffusion model account of the relationship between the emotional flanker task and rumination and depression

Although there exists a consensus that depression is characterized by preferential processing of negative information, empirical findings to support the association between depression and rumination on the one hand and selective attention for negative stimuli on the other hand have been elusive. We argue that one of the reasons for the inconsistent findings may be the use of aggregate measures of response times and accuracies to measure attentional bias. Diffusion model analysis allows to partial out the information processing component from other components that comprise the decision-making process. In this study, we applied a diffusion model to an emotional flanker task. Results revealed that when focusing on a negative target, both rumination and depression were associated with facilitated processing due to negative distracters, whereas only rumination was associated with less interference by positive distracters. After controlling for depression scores, rumination still predicted attentional bias for negative information, but depression scores were no longer predictive after controlling for rumination. Consistent with elusive findings in the literature, we did not find this pattern of results when using accuracy scores or mean response times. Our results suggest that rumination accounts for the attentional bias for negative information found in depression.

Negative emotion differentiation: Its personality and well-being correlates and a comparison of different assessment methods

Previous research has shown that individual differences in negative emotion differentiation may play a prominent role in well-being. Yet, many basic questions about negative emotion differentiation remain unanswered, including how it relates and overlaps with related and known dimensions of individual differences and what its possible underlying processes are. To answer these questions, in the current article we present three correlational studies that chart the nomological network of individual differences in negative emotion differentiation in terms of personality, difficulties in identifying and describing feelings, and several indicators of well-being, propose a novel paradigm to assess it in the lab, and explore relationships with a possible underlying mechanism in terms of the motivation to approach or avoid emotions. The results affirm consistent relations between negative emotion differentiation and indicators of adjustment like negative affect, self-esteem, neuroticism, depression and meta-knowledge about ones emotions, and show how it is related to the motivation to experience affective states.

Executive well-being: updating of positive stimuli in working memory is associated with subjective well-being.

A growing literature shows that the ability to control affective information in working memory (WM) plays an important role in emotional functioning. Whereas most studies have focused on executive processes relating to emotion dysregulation and mood disorders, few, if any, have looked at such processes in association with happiness. In this study, we examined whether the ability to update positive and negative stimuli in WM (assessed with an affective n-back task) is related to the cognitive and affective components of subjective well-being. Participants who were better at retaining and updating specifically positive (not negative) information in WM displayed higher levels of life satisfaction and affect balance, both at the trait level and in daily life. These results suggest that effective updating of positive information in WM may underlie happy peoples ability to maintain and further enhance positive thoughts and emotions.

Assessing Temporal Emotion Dynamics Using Networks

Multivariate psychological processes have recently been studied, visualized, and analyzed as networks. In this network approach, psychological constructs are represented as complex systems of interacting components. In addition to insightful visualization of dynamics, a network perspective leads to a new way of thinking about the nature of psychological phenomena by offering new tools for studying dynamical processes in psychology. In this article, we explain the rationale of the network approach, the associated methods and visualization, and illustrate it using an empirical example focusing on the relation between the daily fluctuations of emotions and neuroticism. The results suggest that individuals with high levels of neuroticism had a denser emotion network compared with their less neurotic peers. This effect is especially pronounced for the negative emotion network, which is in line with previous studies that found a denser network in depressed subjects than in healthy subjects. In sum, we show how the network approach may offer new tools for studying dynamical processes in psychology.

Interference resolution moderates the impact of rumination and reappraisal on affective experiences in daily life

Research has shown that cognitive control processes play a central role in emotion regulation. While most research has examined whether individual differences in such processes are related to the use of these strategies, a crucial next step involves examining whether such differences influence their impact on peoples feelings, especially in normal daily life. The present study examined whether impairments in cognitive control (measured using an affective interference resolution task) moderate the impact of using rumination and reappraisal on affective experiences in everyday life (assessed using experience sampling methods). Multilevel analyses revealed that difficulties removing previously relevant negative information from working memory were associated with a larger increase in negative affect following rumination, and smaller increase and decrease in positive and negative affect, respectively, following reappraisal. These findings show that impaired interference resolution for negative information aggravates the deleterious effects of rumination and curbs the benefits of reappraisal in daily life.

Emotional Inertia and External Events: The Roles of Exposure, Reactivity, and Recovery

Increased moment-to-moment predictability, or inertia, of negative affect has been identified as an important dynamic marker of psychological maladjustment, and increased vulnerability to depression in particular. However, little is known about the processes underlying emotional inertia. The current article examines how the emotional context, and peoples responses to it, are related to emotional inertia. We investigated how individual differences in the inertia of negative affect (NA) are related to individual differences in exposure, reactivity, and recovery from emotional events, in daily life (assessed using experience sampling) as well as in the lab (assessed using an emotional film-clip task), among 200 participants commencing their first year of tertiary education. This dual-method approach allowed us to assess affective responding on different timescales, and in response to standardized as well as idiographic emotional stimuli. Our most consistent finding, across both methods, was that heightened NA inertia is related to decreased NA recovery following negative stimuli, suggesting that higher levels of inertia may be mostly driven by impairments in affect repair following negative events.

Affective updating ability and stressful events interact to prospectively predict increases in depressive symptoms over time

Previous research has emphasized the critical role of negative cognitions as a vulnerability factor in predicting depressive symptoms. Here, the authors argue that processes that function to maintain negative cognitions may serve as a catalyst for the development of depressive symptoms in the context of negative circumstances, and they suggest that poor updating of affective information in working memory is 1 such process. Thus, they posit that under high levels of stress, individuals with poor affective updating are hindered in changing the negative content in working memory associated with stressful events and, therefore, are more likely to experience increased depressive symptoms over time. To examine this hypothesis, the authors assessed affective updating ability, stress, and depressive symptoms in 200 students who were entering their first year of tertiary education. They assessed levels of depressive symptoms again both 4 months and 1 year later. Under high levels of stress, poor affective updating ability was associated with an increase in depressive symptoms at both 4 months and 1 year later. These results demonstrate that affective updating ability is an important cognitive vulnerability factor that interacts with stressful events to accelerate the development of depressive symptoms, and underscore the importance of designing early prevention or intervention approaches for individuals with this cognitive vulnerability.

Sad and alone: Social expectancies for experiencing negative emotions are linked to feelings of loneliness

Western culture has become obsessed with happiness, while treating negative emotions like sadness, depression, or anxiety as pathological and nonnormative. These salient cultural norms communicate social expectations that people should feel “happy” and not “sad.” Previous research has shown that these “social expectancies” can increase feelings of sadness and reduce well-being. In this study, we examined whether these perceived social pressures might also lead people to feel socially disconnected—lonely—when they do experience negative emotions? Drawing on a large stratified sample prescreened for depressive symptoms and utilizing both trait measures and moment-to-moment “experience sampling” over a 7-day period, we found that people who felt more negative emotions and also believe that others in society disapprove of these emotions reported more loneliness. Our data suggest that social pressures to be happy and not sad can make people feel more socially isolated when they do feel sad.