Affective differentiation in breast cancer patients

Abstract

Fifty-three breast cancer patients completed an Internet-based diary measuring daily negative affect and positive affect and daily negative and positive events for seven consecutive evenings shortly after surgery. The authors used Hierarchical Linear Modeling (Raudenbush and Bryk in Hierarchical linear models: applications and data analysis methods. Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA, 2002) to examine moderators of affective differentiation, or the daily relationship between the patients' negative affect and positive affect. Strong affective differentiation is characterized by the relative independence of negative and positive affect. There were no significant Level 1 (within-subject) moderators of affective differentiation. However, at Level 2 (between-subject), as predicted, increased age was associated with stronger affective differentiation, as was greater use of planning to cope with breast cancer. Also as predicted, increased anxiety and greater use of behavioral disengagement and denial coping were associated with weaker affective differentiation. The results suggest the value of the affective differentiation construct, and a daily diary methodology, for research on the daily lives of breast cancer patients.

Investigating the relationship between emotional granularity and cardiorespiratory physiological activity in daily life

“…The end‐of‐day surveys used in the present study also provided participants with some details recorded at the time of the experience‐sampling moment, theoretically allowing them to re‐instantiate earlier experiences with greater fidelity. Multiple prior studies have assessed granularity using daily diary methods in which participants rate emotional events from earlier in the day (e.g., Barrett et al., 2001; Dasch et al., 2010).…”

Emotional Granularity Increases With Intensive Ambulatory Assessment: Methodological and Individual Factors Influence How Much

“…In addition, this study was the first to use a two-step approach to assess emotional granularity, in which participants received experience sampling prompts during the day and provided additional information (including emotion intensity ratings) for each prompt in end-of-day diaries. The combination of momentary and daily diary assessment has precedent in the literature (e.g., Businelle et al, 2016 ); it is also not uncommon to assess emotional granularity using daily diary methods in which participants rate emotional events from earlier in the day (e.g., Barrett et al, 2001 ; Dasch et al, 2010 ; for a review, see Thompson et al, 2021 ). It is possible that a two-step approach influenced the data obtained at end of day by, for example, providing an opportunity for initial emotion regulation in the moment (e.g., via affect labeling; Torre and Lieberman, 2018 ) or introducing some recall bias (e.g., Levine and Safer, 2002 ; but see Schneider et al, 2020 ).…”

Partner social constraints and early-stage breast cancer: Longitudinal associations with psychosexual adjustment.

“…For the purposes of the present study, data were drawn from two independent samples of patients who participated in studies of couples coping with BC (Sample 1: Belcher et al, 2011; Dasch et al, 2010; Pasipanodya et al, 2012; Sample 2: Otto, Laurenceau, Siegel, & Belcher, 2015). Fifty-four participants constituted Sample 1 and 54 participants constituted Sample 2, resulting in a final sample of 108 BC patients.…”