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

Abstract

Emotional granularity describes the ability to create emotional experiences that are precise and context-specific. Despite growing evidence of a link between emotional granularity and mental health, the physiological correlates of granularity have been under-investigated. This study explored the relationship between granularity and cardiorespiratory physiological activity in everyday life, with particular reference to the role of respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA), an estimate of vagal influence on the heart often associated with positive mental and physical health outcomes. Participants completed a physiologically triggered experience sampling protocol including ambulatory recording of electrocardiogram (ECG), impedance cardiogram (ICG), movement, and posture. At each prompt, participants generated emotion labels to describe their current experience. In an end-of-day survey, participants elaborated on each prompt by rating the intensity of their experience on a standard set of emotion adjectives. Consistent with our hypotheses, individuals with higher granularity exhibited a larger number of distinct patterns of physiological activity during seated rest, and more situationally precise patterns of activity during emotional events: granularity was positively correlated with the number of clusters of cardiorespiratory physiological activity discovered in seated rest data, as well as with the performance of classifiers trained on event-related changes in physiological activity. Granularity was also positively associated with RSA during seated rest periods, although this relationship did not reach significance in this sample. These findings are consistent with constructionist accounts of emotion that propose concepts as a key mechanism underlying individual differences in emotional experience, physiological regulation, and physical health.

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

“…Our finding that larger increases in positive emotional granularity were associated with higher resting RSA is especially noteworthy given prior evidence of a positive relationship between resting RSA and both emotional and mental health (e.g., Balzarotti et al, 2017 ), and the potential role of RSA in facilitating emotional learning (e.g., Pappens et al, 2014 ). Our finding is also consistent with studies demonstrating associations between higher resting RSA and stable positive affect ( Oveis et al, 2009 ; Koval et al, 2013 ) and builds on recent work with this same sample showing a positive relationship between overall emotional granularity and resting RSA in daily life ( Hoemann et al, 2021 ). The exact nature of the link between emotional granularity and resting RSA is an open question.…”

“…The seventh predictor variable, resting RSA, was derived from the ambulatory peripheral physiological data. As reported in Hoemann et al (2021) , we first identified periods of seated rest in the ECG signal according to the following criteria: participant position was seated and not moving (i.e., no forward acceleration); participant maintained this position for at least 60 s and no experience-sampling prompt was triggered. We excluded data from the first 30 s of each period of seated rest to allow for the ECG signal to stabilize following movement.…”

“…The experience of emotion occurs when the brain issues a prediction using a concept for emotion. More context-specific predictions – which come from more precise (emotion) concepts – are more efficient because they better anticipate probable actions and upcoming energy needs ( Hoemann et al, 2021 ). Functionalist ( Goldston et al, 1992 ; Shiota et al, 2014 ; Plonsker et al, 2017 ) and appraisal-based accounts ( Boden et al, 2013 ; Erbas et al, 2014 , 2018 , 2021 ; Thompson et al, 2021 ) of emotional granularity, in turn, hypothesize that differentiated emotional experiences are adaptive because they provide more specific or accurate information about the current situation, which enables individuals to react appropriately and engage in more effective emotion regulation ( Kalokerinos et al, 2019 ).…”

“…In the present study, we sought to replicate and extend the findings from Widdershoven et al (2019) in a non-clinical sample. To do so, we used existing data from an intensive ambulatory assessment study including experience sampling, peripheral physiological monitoring, and end-of-day diaries ( Hoemann et al, 2020a , 2021 ). Participants completed approximately 14, 8-h days of ambulatory assessment, during which their electrocardiogram (ECG), impedance cardiogram (ICG), electrodermal activity, movement, and posture were recorded.…”

Emotion Differentiation and Youth Mental Health: Current Understanding and Open Questions

“…There are several other aspects of this theoretical model that can be further refined, and addressing these open questions is likely to require collaboration across psychological subdisciplines. For instance, even though a handful of studies have used neuroimaging or psychophysiological approaches to study emotion differentiation (Lee et al, 2017;Wang et al, 2020a,b;Hoemann et al, 2021), the biological mechanisms that explain why emotion differentiation boosts regulation remain largely unclear. Additionally, the clinical question of multifinality has yet to be addressed (e.g., why are some people with low emotion differentiation prone to alcohol use, while others engage in non-suicidal self-injury?).…”