Higher emotion regulation flexibility predicts more stable negative emotions and faster affective recovery in early psychosis: an experience sampling study.

Background: While evidence shows that people with early psychosis are flexible in using different emotion regulation (ER) strategies to manage the varying contextual demands, no studies have examined the effectiveness of such regulatory flexibility in this population. We addressed this issue by investigating whether and how ER flexibility relate to different dynamic aspects (variability, instability, inertia, and recovery) of negative affect (NA) in a combined early psychosis sample, consisting of both individuals at high clinical risk for psychosis and those diagnosed with first-episode psychosis.

Methods: Participants were 148 individuals from the INTERACT project, a multi-center randomized controlled trial on the efficacy of acceptance and commitment therapy in early psychosis.

Emotion regulation in daily life in early psychosis: The role of contextual appraisals.

Background: Little is known about whether and how contextual appraisals relate to emotion regulation (ER) strategy use across the ultra-high risk and first episode stages of psychosis. The present study extends previous research by investigating the extent to which different appraisal dimensions of the most negative and positive events of the day are associated with ER strategy use in individuals with ultra-high risk (UHR) and first-episode psychosis (FEP).

Method: Sixty-eight UHR individuals and fifty-five FEP individuals filled out an experience sampling evening questionnaire for six consecutive days, in which their appraisal of intensity, importance and perceived control concerning the most negative or positive event of the day, and the ER strategies they deploy in response to these events were measured.

A mixed-method investigation into measurement reactivity to the experience sampling method: The role of sampling protocol and individual characteristics.

Since the introduction of the experience sampling method (ESM), there have been concerns that the repeated assessments typically related to this method may alter the behavior, thoughts, or feelings of participants. Previous studies have offered mixed results with some studies reporting reactive changes, while others failed to find such effects. Our aim was to investigate under which circumstances ESM induces reactive effects.

The Short-Term Psychological Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic in Psychiatric Patients: Evidence for Differential Emotion and Symptom Trajectories in Belgium.

The spread of COVID-19 and the implementation of various containment strategies across the world have seriously disrupted people's everyday life, and it is especially uncertain what the psychological impact of this pandemic will be for vulnerable individuals, such as psychiatric (ex-)patients. Governments fear that this virus outbreak may prelude a major mental health crisis, and psychiatrists launch critical calls to flatten an upcoming mental ill-health surge. Here, we aim to add nuance to the idea that we are heading towards a mental health pandemic and that psychiatric populations will unavoidably (re)develop psychopathology.

The Statistical Specificity of Emotion Dynamics in Borderline Personality Disorder.

Persons with borderline personality disorder (BPD) experience heightened emotional instability. Different components underlie instability, and the relation between instability and well-being could be confounded by average emotionality and within-person standard deviation across emotional states, reflecting variability. Therefore, the goal was to examine which pattern of emotion dynamics parsimoniously captures the emotional trajectories of persons with BPD.

Why do my thoughts feel so bad? Getting at the reciprocal effects of rumination and negative affect using dynamic structural equation modeling.

Rumination means to perseveratively think about one's negative feelings and problems. It is a response to affective distress that is often referred to as maladaptive emotion regulation. According to the response styles theory and control theory, rumination may further prolong and exacerbate affective distress.

The Effects of Sampling Frequency and Questionnaire Length on Perceived Burden, Compliance, and Careless Responding in Experience Sampling Data in a Student Population.

Currently, little is known about the association between assessment intensity, burden, data quantity, and data quality in experience sampling method (ESM) studies. Researchers therefore have insufficient information to make informed decisions about the design of their ESM study. Our aim was to investigate the effects of different sampling frequencies and questionnaire lengths on burden, compliance, and careless responding.

Self-criticism and dependency predict affective variability in borderline personality disorder: An ecological momentary assessment study.

Affective variability is a defining feature of borderline personality disorder (BPD). We hypothesize that patients with BPD who score higher on self-criticism and/or dependency-patients with a relative emphasis on self-definition and interpersonal relatedness, respectively-are characterized by more affective variability in positive and negative emotions. To examine this hypothesis, a sample of 32 patients with BPD reported their momentary feelings of anger, depression, anxiety, cheerfulness, and relaxation in an experience sampling study with 10 random signals scheduled per day for 8 days.

Complex affect dynamics add limited information to the prediction of psychological well-being.

Over the years, many studies have demonstrated a relation between emotion dynamics and psychological well-being. Because our emotional life is inherently time-dynamic, affective scientists argue that, next to how positive or negative we feel on average, patterns of emotional change are informative for mental health. This growing interest initiated a surge in new affect dynamic measures, each claiming to capture a unique dynamical aspect of our emotional life, crucial for understanding well-being.

The dynamical signature of anhedonia in major depressive disorder: positive emotion dynamics, reactivity, and recovery.

Background: Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is the leading cause of disability worldwide. The cardinal features of MDD are depressed mood and anhedonia. Anhedonia is defined as a "markedly diminished interest or pleasure in all, or almost all, activities of the day", and has generally been investigated on group-level using retrospective data (e.

Emotional reactivity to appraisals in patients with a borderline personality disorder: a daily life study.

Background: Emotional instability, consisting of patterns of strong emotional changes over time, has consistently been demonstrated in daily life of patients with a borderline personality disorder (BPD). Yet, little empirical work has examined emotional changes that occur specifically in response to emotional triggers in daily life, so-called emotional reactivity. The goal of this study was to examine emotional reactivity in response to general emotional appraisals (i.

Why I don't always know what I'm feeling: The role of stress in within-person fluctuations in emotion differentiation.

Emotion differentiation, the ability to make fine-grained distinctions between emotional states, has mainly been studied as a trait. In this research, we examine within-person fluctuations in emotion differentiation and hypothesize that stress is a central factor in predicting these fluctuations. We predict that experiencing stress will result in lower levels of emotion differentiation.

Are emotional action tendencies and attentional bias related to temperament dimensions in patients with borderline personality disorder?

Disturbances in emotion regulation have been identified as a core feature of patients with a borderline personality disorder (BPD). Findings of studies using experimental measures of emotion processing are mixed, which may be partially explained by the heterogeneity of the BPD population. To address this issue, we investigated differences in experimental measures of emotional action tendencies (approach-avoidance behaviour) and attentional bias to emotional stimuli in BPD subtypes.

The bipolarity of affect and depressive symptoms.

People differ in the extent to which they experience positive (PA) and negative affect (NA) rather independently or as bipolar opposites. Here, we examine the proposition that the nature of the relation between positive and negative affect in a person's emotional experience is indicative of psychological well-being, in particular the experience of depressive symptoms, typically characterized by diminished positive affect (anhedonia) and increased negative affect (depressed mood). In three experience sampling studies, we examine how positive and negative affective states are related within people's emotional experience in daily life and how the degree of bipolarity of this relation is associated with depressive symptom severity.

The specificity of emotional switching in borderline personality disorder in comparison to other clinical groups.

In an attempt to better understand the nature of emotion dysregulation in the daily lives of persons with a borderline personality disorder (BPD), Houben et al. (2016) recently identified emotional switching, which refers to the tendency to make large changes between positive and negative emotional states over time, as a possible defining characteristic of the emotion dynamics observed in BPD. The goal of this study was to examine the specificity of these previous findings in 2 samples by comparing BPD patients (N = 43 in sample 1; N = 81 in sample 2) to patients with bulimia nervosa (N = 20), posttraumatic stress disorder (N = 28), or healthy controls (N = 28) in sample 1, and to patients with depressive disorder (N = 50) in sample 2, with respect to measures of emotional switching.

Emotional switching in borderline personality disorder: A daily life study.

Despite large efforts to understand emotional instability in borderline personality disorder (BPD), it is still unclear exactly how this is manifested in the daily lives of people suffering from the disorder. Building on theoretical and clinical observations of BPD, we propose that the emotional instability in BPD particularly consists of the occurrence of strong changes between positive and negative emotional states from 1 moment to the next, labeled emotional switching. We tested this proposal by means of an experience sampling study in which 30 BPD patients and 28 healthy controls reported in their daily lives the level of pleasantness/unpleasantness of their emotional states 10 times a day for 8 consecutive days using handheld palmtops.

Updating in working memory predicts greater emotion reactivity to and facilitated recovery from negative emotion-eliciting stimuli.

That emotions change in response to emotion-eliciting events is a natural part of human life. However, it is equally important for emotions to return to baseline once the emotion-eliciting events have passed. This suggests that the ability to emotionally react to and recover from emotion-eliciting events is critical for healthy psychological functioning.

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 people's responses to it, are related to emotional inertia.

The relation between short-term emotion dynamics and psychological well-being: A meta-analysis.

Not only how good or bad people feel on average, but also how their feelings fluctuate across time is crucial for psychological health. The last 2 decades have witnessed a surge in research linking various patterns of short-term emotional change to adaptive or maladaptive psychological functioning, often with conflicting results. A meta-analysis was performed to identify consistent relationships between patterns of short-term emotion dynamics-including patterns reflecting emotional variability (measured in terms of within-person standard deviation of emotions across time), emotional instability (measured in terms of the magnitude of consecutive emotional changes), and emotional inertia of emotions over time (measured in terms of autocorrelation)-and relatively stable indicators of psychological well-being or psychopathology.

Unraveling affective dysregulation in borderline personality disorder: a theoretical model and empirical evidence.

Although emotion dysregulation has consistently been conceptualized as a core problem of borderline personality disorder (BPD), a comprehensive, and empirically and ecologically validated model that captures the exact types of dysregulation remains absent. In the present article, we combine insights from basic affective science and the biosocial theory of BPD to present a theoretical model that captures the most fundamental affective dynamical processes that underlie BPD and stipulates that individuals with BPD are characterized by more negative affective homebases, higher levels of affective variability, and lower levels of attractor strength or return to baseline. Next, we empirically validate this proposal by statistically modeling data from three electronic diary studies on emotional responses to personally relevant stimuli in personally relevant environments that were collected both from patients with BPD (N = 50, 42, and 43) and from healthy subjects (N = 50, 24, and 28).