Emotion

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)
Unique affective profile of music-evoked nostalgia: An extension and conceptual replication of Barrett et al.’s (2010) study.
Nostalgia is a mixed emotion, often evoked by music. This study sought to conceptually replicate and extend Barrett et al.’s (see record 2010-09991-008) pioneering work exploring music-evoked nostalgia, where the authors identified person- and context-level predictors of the experience of nostalgia in music. In a sample of 582 adults across the United States, we identified self-selected nostalgic and musically matched nonnostalgic, familiar songs for each individual, using an online survey in 2021. The participants listened to music and indicated feelings of valence and arousal, followed by assessments of affect (Positive and Negative Affect Schedule, Short Form) and personality (Ten-Item Personality Inventory, Brief Affective Neuroscience Personality Scales, and Southampton Nostalgia Scale). Nostalgic songs were rated higher in valence and arousal than familiar, nonnostalgic control songs, and higher in mixed valence in some metrics. Individuals with higher trait-level Trait Nostalgia reported higher nostalgia ratings across nostalgic and control songs. Interactions between context- and person-level factors indicated that personality influenced the felt valence and arousal profile of music-evoked nostalgia, distinct from familiar control music. While some personality types found nostalgic music to make them feel more aroused and positive (those high in care, trait nostalgia, anger), others felt more negative while listening (those high in sadness). Last, we extend the personality profile of a highly nostalgic person; trait-level Trait Nostalgia was associated with care, play, agreeableness, extraversion, and neuroticism. We demonstrate affective and person-level contributors to music-evoked nostalgia observed in Barrett et al.’s (2010) hold even when controlling for familiarity and musical features. We provide novel insights on complex interactions supporting this emotion, in a larger and more diverse sample with personalized stimuli. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
The mind wanders to dark places: Mind-wandering catalyzes rumination in the context of negative affect and impulsivity.
Spontaneous mind-wandering has been theorized to increase susceptibility for rumination, contributing to risk for major depressive disorder (MDD). Clarifying whether—and under what circumstances—mind-wandering leads to rumination could inform the development of targeted interventions to reduce risk for ruminative sequelae. Using intensively sampled data in 44 young adults with remitted MDD and 38 healthy volunteers with 1,558 total observations collected from 2018 to 2022, we conducted multilevel models to investigate temporal relationships between mind-wandering and rumination. Contextual factors (e.g., intensity of negative affect; momentary impulsivity) and individual factors (e.g., MDD history) were examined as moderators of these relationships. Mind-wandering predicted increased rumination, whereas rumination did not predict increased mind-wandering. When individuals experienced greater negative affect or acted more impulsively compared to their usual levels, they showed a stronger relationship between mind-wandering and subsequent rumination. Depression history did not significantly moderate temporal relationships between mind-wandering and rumination. Spontaneous mind-wandering may transition into rumination, particularly during moments when people experience more negative affect or impulsivity compared to usual. Delivering interventions in these moments could reduce risk for ruminative sequelae. The tendency to ruminate in response to mind-wandering is suggested to be consistent regardless of depression history, suggesting the transdiagnostic and dimensional nature of rumination as a possible consequence of mind-wandering. Future work is needed to determine whether these associations are generalizable across the lifespan. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Emotional integration and reappraisal during goal pursuit: Testing within- and between-person differences.
Goal pursuit is rife with obstacles triggering negative emotions. To persist in goal pursuit, individuals need to regulate these emotions using adaptive emotion regulation strategies. Reappraisal and emotional integration are two such strategies. Reappraisal involves people’s attempts to reframe how they are thinking about an emotional situation, whereas emotional integration involves taking an interest in emotions as they arise. In three studies, we examined the distinct effects of these two strategies on goal pursuit at the within-person and the between-person levels. Study 1 (N = 264) was a three-wave, short-term longitudinal study. At the within-person level, emotional integration predicted goal progress and goal effort but also predicted negative affect, while reappraisal predicted goal progress and positive affect. At the between-person level, emotional integration was positively related to optimal goal pursuit outcomes, whereas reappraisal was negatively related. Study 2 (N = 154) and Study 3 (N = 366) used daily methodologies and followed participants across 10 days. At the daily within-person level, reappraisal was a stronger predictor of goal progress, goal effort, and positive affect than emotional integration. Emotional integration predicted daily negative affect. In contrast, at the between-person level, emotional integration better predicted these outcomes than reappraisal. Collectively, these studies provide a nuanced understanding of how adaptive emotion regulation strategies relate to goal pursuit. The results show that within-participants reappraisal is more strongly related to increased goal progress, effort, and positive affect than emotional integration. However, habitual emotional integration aligns with greater overall goal effort and progress than habitual reappraisal. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
The development and validation of the Emotional Entitlement Questionnaire (EEQ).
Beliefs about what one is entitled to emotionally may make a unique contribution to emotional and interpersonal experiences. In the present study, we introduce the concept of emotional entitlement, the degree to which people believe they have the right to experience different emotions (e.g., the right to feel happy, angry, sad, etc.). Our aim was to develop and validate the Emotional Entitlement Questionnaire (EEQ). In the first study (N = 200), we constructed a three-factor, 15-item EEQ, in Hebrew. Factor analysis revealed a three-factor structure of emotional entitlement to positive emotions (EEP), emotional entitlement to negative emotions (EEN), and the maladaptive aspect of emotional entitlement which we termed uncompromised emotional entitlement (EEU). The second study (N = 672) replicated this three-factor structure in a new independent sample and established test–retest reliability using two timepoints. In the third study (N = 495), we translated the EEQ into English and replicated the three-factor structure in another independent sample while establishing initial validity using the entitlement questionnaire, the positive and negative affect schedule, and the interpersonal emotion regulation questionnaire. Different dimensions of the EEQ were related to different levels of life satisfaction and loneliness, above and beyond the contribution of global entitlement. Overall, we would suggest that EEP represents an adaptive aspect of emotional entitlement, EEU represents a maladaptive aspect, and EEN has both adaptive and maladaptive aspects. The results indicate that emotional entitlement is a multidimensional construct and that the EEQ is a reliable and valid tool with good psychometric properties. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Does empathy promote helping by activating altruistic motivation or concern about social evaluation? A direct replication of Fultz et al. (1986).
When people experience empathy for a needy stranger, efforts to help are often not far behind. But does empathy actually cause prosocial behavior? And if so, does it activate genuine concern or more self-interested motivations? To rule out the alternative hypothesis that empathy motivates prosocial behavior by generating fear of social disapproval for acting selfishly, Fultz et al. (1986) manipulated empathy for a lonely stranger using perspective-taking instructions; they also manipulated whether subjects believed their decision to help would remain anonymous. However, Fultz et al. conducted their experiment decades ago, with few subjects, and before some potentially important cultural changes in college students’ values and social lives. Here, in a preregistered replication with 280 undergraduates, we tested Fultz et al.’s key assertions. The perspective-taking and social evaluation manipulations influenced scores on the manipulation check measures mostly in theory-consistent ways but did not significantly influence helping. Consistent with theory, empathy was positively associated with prosocial behavior. We also found evidence that endorsement of the principle of care reflects genuine concern for needy strangers and that moral identity symbolization reflects a desire to help in order to avoid social disapproval. We consider these results a partially successful replication of key tenets of the empathy–altruism hypothesis, though questions remain about the conditions under which perspective-taking promotes prosocial behavior and about the generalizability of our findings to populations beyond undergraduate women circa 1986. Our results also help illuminate the motivational underpinnings of two individual differences that predicted prosocial behavior in previous research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Daily profiles of parents’ supportive extrinsic emotion regulation of adolescents’ negative emotion.
Parental support for adolescent emotion regulation is critical for adolescents’ health. Yet, little is known about parents’ daily support of adolescents’ emotion regulation. This study aimed to typify daily co-parent supportive extrinsic emotion regulation (EER) profiles directed toward adolescents’ daily distress and anger. The sample comprised 153 adolescent–parent triads; adolescents’ mean age, 15.71 years (SD = 1.53), 51% girls. Over 7 consecutive days, adolescents self-reported their distress and anger, while parents reported their own negative emotions and their perception of the adolescent’s negative emotions. Parents also reported daily on their utilization of seven supportive EER strategies, including problem- and emotion-focused strategies. Multilevel latent profile analysis (MLPA) identified four day-level profiles of parental EER; “low” (40% of days), reflecting low EER efforts of both parents across all EER strategies: “high” (12%), reflecting high EER involvement of both parents across all strategies; “mother-high father-low” (26%), reflecting mothers’ high and fathers’ low use of all strategies; “father-high mother-average” (22%), reflecting fathers’ high use of all strategies, and mothers’ low to average use of all strategies. The likelihood of specific EER profiles across days did not associate with daily changes in adolescents’ anger. However, on days when adolescents felt more distress, the likelihood of a “high” parental EER profile was significantly greater than “low.” Findings suggest a dynamic repertoire of co-parent EER profiles, responsive to adolescent heartfelt emotions but not hostility. The lack of parental EER of adolescents’ anger might put adolescents at increased risk for anger escalation and the unhealthy discharge of anger. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Tweeting under uncertainty: The relationship between uncertain language and negative emotions in the wild.
Despite decades of research characterizing the relationship between uncertainty and emotion, little is known about how these constructs interact in the wild. Using naturalistic, large-scale language produced on Twitter, we ask whether increases in environmental uncertainty and associated aversive emotional reactions can be captured by the millions of digital traces of people sharing their thoughts online. Analyzing more than 20 million tweets from more than 7.5 million unique users, we find that uncertainty expressions peak when environmental uncertainty is high. This effect, however, is modulated by the type of trigger that increases uncertainty. Pandemics (COVID-19 in 2020) and national U.S. elections (2021) exhibit an increase in uncertainty language and negative sentiment in the real world, illustrating the well-documented relationship between uncertainty and aversive emotional reactions acting in lockstep. In contrast, when uncertain events involve a moral violation (i.e., the 2021 U.S. Capitol attack), specific negative emotions (i.e., anger, fear, and moral outrage) sharply increase, while uncertainty language abruptly decreases. This reveals that in the real world, uncertainty and emotion have a more complex relationship than originally assumed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Neural mechanisms for secondary suppression of emotional distractors: Evidence from concurrent electroencephalography–magnetoencephalography data.
Distractor suppression allows us to remain on-task in the presence of distractions by filtering task-irrelevant information from ongoing cognitive processing and responding. Electrophysiological studies have revealed that this key feature of selective attention is a dynamic process that involves at least two distinct stages of processing. Two important aspects of these processing stages remain unclear: Whether the processing of emotional distractors at an earlier stage is automatic, as reflected in the N2/early posterior negativity (EPN) component; and what functional-anatomical brain systems are recruited in each stage. The present study addresses these issues by measuring brain activity with concurrent electroencephalography–magnetoencephalography (MEG) recordings while participants performed a combined rapid serial visual presentation and motion tracking task. Event-related potentials (ERP) showed significant effects of attentional capture and attentional modulation during two time windows marked by the N2/EPN and P3b ERP components. Source reconstruction of concurrent MEG measurements revealed activation of the left visual association cortex and anterior cingulate cortex during the N2/EPN time window, activation of the insula during the early phase of the P3b and anterior cingulate cortex activity during the later phase of the P3b. The findings provide novel evidence establishing a connection between the increased N2 response to negative pictures and the activation of the cingulate gyrus, which facilitates the suppression of distractions during demanding cognitive tasks. In addition, distinct activation patterns were observed in the insula and anterior cingulate cortex during the P3b time window, indicating that attentional control mediated by the anterior cingulate cortex operates to suppress the processing of distracting emotional stimuli. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Information gathering: Dissociable effects of autistic and alexithymic traits in youths aged 6–25 years.
Autistic youths tend to react negatively to uncertain events. Little is known about the cognitive processes associated with this intolerance of uncertainty, most notably the tendency to actively gather information to minimize uncertainty. Past research has relied on self-report measures that may not allow investigation of the multifaceted processes associated with intolerance of uncertainty, including information gathering. Alexithymia (difficulties in identifying and describing one’s own emotions) commonly co-occurs with autistic traits, but its role in information gathering has rarely been considered. Accordingly, 97 typically developing youths (aged 6–25 years) performed an information gathering task in which they were asked to gather information to infer socioemotional (emotional state) and nonsocial (clothing preference) information about another person when information gathering was costly versus not costly. Dimensional autistic traits were associated with more information gathering regardless of costs and information type. Computational modeling suggested this may be because of the delayed emergence of subjective costs of information gathering in high autistic trait individuals, resulting in later guesses. Alexithymia was uniquely associated with inconsistent emotional responses to rewards and losses and to reduced information gathering about emotional states when assessed using parent-report measures. Future validation in youths diagnosed with autism is warranted to test the generalizability of the findings. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
A new hope induction.
The experience of hope predicts a host of positive outcomes. However, to date, the psychology of hope has paid little attention to hope as an emotion, focusing instead on hope as a sense of effective goal pursuit. Seven studies (N = 3,357) tested various manipulations intended to induce hopeful feelings distinct from general positive mood. Images of infant’s faces and tree saplings were found to successfully induce hopeful feelings, even when controlling for happiness, compared with adult faces or full-grown trees, respectively. Infant objects, paintings, or puppies did not produce the same effects. We discuss the necessity of studying the emotion of hope and potential directions with such a hopeful induction. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
The “memory-experience gap” for affect does not reflect a general memory bias to overestimate past affect.
Retrospective self-reports are widely used to measure affect and well-being. But researchers have long assumed that people overestimate affective experiences in retrospect and that retrospective self-reports are thus biased. This is because of the memory-experience gap, a phenomenon in which retrospective ratings for a longer timeframe are higher than the average of repeated ratings for shorter timeframes. This discrepancy is the basis of theories about how some people may overestimate their past feelings in general and a bias in retrospective self-reports. Rather than reflecting a memory bias, however, the discrepancy could be due to differences in how people summarize their feelings over different timeframes. To remove this confound, we used an online convenience sample and measured affect over several timeframes for a week (N = 399; collected in 2022), as well as memory for past affect over the same timeframe. Longer timeframes (e.g., 1 week) were rated higher than shorter timeframes (e.g., averaged across each day of that week) for both negative and positive affect, demonstrating the memory-experience gap. But ratings for each day given at the end of the week, from memory, were lower than those given for each day during the week. Ratings based solely on memory were therefore in the opposite direction to the memory-experience gap. This brings into question the assumption made by some researchers that the “memory-experience gap” reflects a memory bias in retrospective self-reports. Generalizability to other methodological designs, constructs, and populations requires testing. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Uncertainty moderates the emotional consequences of reappraisal, social sharing, and rumination in daily life.
People must often wait for important but uncertain outcomes, like medical results or job offers. During such uncertain waiting periods, there is uncertainty around an outcome that people have minimal control over. Uncertainty makes these periods emotionally challenging, raising the possibility that emotion regulation strategies may have different effects while people wait for an uncertain outcome versus after they learn that outcome. To test this possibility, we conducted secondary analyses of an experience sampling study following 101 Belgian University students for 9 days as they waited for (uncertain period), and then received (certain period), consequential exam grades. Across 8,275 observations, we tested the effects of six emotion regulation strategies on positive and negative emotions about anticipated, and then actual, grades. Regardless of uncertainty, acceptance was consistently beneficial for short-term emotional well-being, and expressive suppression was consistently detrimental. However, the consequences of rumination, social sharing, and reappraisal differed when the outcome was uncertain versus certain. Rumination was more detrimental to short-term emotional well-being during the uncertain than certain period, while social sharing and reappraisal were detrimental in the uncertain period but beneficial in the certain period. These findings suggest uncertainty moderates the short-term effectiveness of some emotion regulation strategies in an academic context, which may exacerbate the emotional challenges of uncertain waiting periods. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Intertemporal empathy decline: Feeling less distress for future others’ suffering.
The present actions of individuals and society at large can cause outsized consequences on future generations’ quality of life. Moral philosophers have explored how people should value the well-being of future generations. Yet, the question of how people actually feel when considering the plight of others in the future compared to the present remains understudied. In four experiments (N = 4,698), we demonstrate evidence of an intertemporal empathy decline such that people feel less empathy toward another person’s suffering in the future compared to the present (Studies 1–4) despite predicting that the same amount of pain would be felt (Studies 1–2). Despite this, imagining another person’s suffering in the future leads to placing greater value on future generations’ welfare (Study 2). We also show that this intertemporal empathy decline reduces the amount people donate to a future-oriented versus present-oriented charity of the same type (Study 3). Finally, we find that prompting people to more vividly imagine another person’s future suffering attenuates the decline in intertemporal empathy (Study 4). Together, this research identifies empathy as a present-biased psychological obstacle impeding future-oriented prosocial behavior. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Individual differences in developmental trajectories of affective attention and relations with competence and social reticence with peers.
This study examined individual differences in affective attention trajectories in infancy and relations with competence and social reticence at 24 months. Data collection spanned 2017 to 2021. Infants (N = 297, 53% White, 49% reported as assigned male at birth) recruited in South Central and Central Pennsylvania and Northern New Jersey provided eye-tracking data at five assessments. Caregivers self-reported anxiety symptoms, infant temperamental negative affect, and infant competence at the final assessment. A subgroup of infants participated in a peer social dyad at the final assessment. Using group-based trajectory modeling, we found three groups of infants with different affective attention trajectories: affective attention increasers (n = 73), affective attention shifters (n = 156), and affective attention decreasers (n = 50). Affective attention increasers exhibited low intercepts with steep attention increases, particularly to angry facial configurations. Affective attention shifters exhibited middle intercepts with attention decreases to facial configurations but an attention increase to angry facial configurations. Affective attention decreasers exhibited high intercepts with steep attention decreases. Infants in the affective attention increasers group exhibited more competence when accounting for caregiver anxiety symptoms and infant temperamental negative affect. Group membership was not related to social reticence during the peer social dyad. Infants higher in temperamental negative affect exhibited more social reticence, particularly as the social dyad continued. Our results provide evidence for individual differences in developmental trajectories of affective attention and relations with toddler social behavior. Our results are primarily generalizable to rural and urban populations in the Midatlantic United States. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)
Maternal symptoms of prenatal depression predict context-incongruent negative emotion in infants.
Prenatal symptoms of depression in mothers are associated with infants’ emotional reactivity. Context-incongruent reactivity, comprising mismatches between the eliciting context and emotional reactions, predicts negative long-term socioemotional outcomes in children. However, the etiology of context-incongruent reactivity is largely unknown, obscuring a full understanding of its potential role as a vulnerability in models outlining the transmission of risk for emotion difficulties from mothers to offspring. We tested mothers’ (N = 92) prenatal depressive symptoms as prospective predictors of infants’ context-incongruent emotion. Greater prenatal symptoms predicted more context-incongruent negativity in infants even when controlling for context-congruent affect. Findings demonstrate a novel utility of context-incongruent emotion as one possible vulnerability linking mothers’ prenatal depression to socioemotional difficulties in offspring. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)

Emotion - Vol 24, Iss 8