The effect of momentary mood on appraisal of facial affect and distrust: an experimental approach using ambulatory assessment

Abstract

Previous laboratory studies have demonstrated that an observer's current mood can influence their processing of facial stimuli, for instance the appraisal of facial affect. The aim of the present study was to explore the association between current mood and face processing in participants' daily lives, thereby making use of naturally occurring affective states. We employed Ambulatory Assessment (AA) and included two experimental tasks to test whether current mood predicts how participants evaluate (i) the valence of emotional faces and (ii) facial trustworthiness. We hypothesized a mood congruent processing, such that individuals would rate pictures of faces more negatively and less trustworthy, the more negative their current mood was. We recruited 42 participants who completed a 7-day AA study with six random prompts per day. At each prompt, participants provided self-reports on momentary mood and completed an emotion rating task and a hypothetical distrust game. Results show that negative momentary mood was significantly associated with higher levels of distrust, but was not significantly associated with more negative emotion ratings. We discuss the incremental value and feasibility of implementing experimental tasks in AA contexts and the opportunities this opens for assessing affective and cognitive processes in natural environments.

Negative affect provides a context for increased distrust in the daily lives of individuals with a history of childhood maltreatment

“…Hypotheses were based on the cognitive model of PTSD, which suggests that trauma engenders increased distrust and interpersonal threat sensitivity (Ehlers & Clark, 2000; Resick & Schnicke, 1993), as well as on previous empirical work showing that this extends to individuals with CM (Catalana et al., 2020; Hepp et al., 2021; Pepin & Banyard, 2006; Pfaltz et al., 2019; Vaile Wright et al., 2010). In addition, the hypotheses are rooted in the feelings‐as‐information theory (Schwarz & Clore, 1983), which has seen empirical support in previous work (Dunn & Schweitzer, 2005; Mislin et al., 2015; Schmid & Schmid Mast, 2010; S. E. Schmitz et al., 2021). First, we hypothesized that higher levels of CM would be associated with a more negative rating of facial expressions “in the moment,” which we interpreted as a proxy for interpersonal threat sensitivity.…”

“…At each prompt, participants answered questions on momentary affect, dissociative symptoms, and intrusions and completed two experimental tasks to assess distrust and interpersonal threat sensitivity (cf. S. E. Schmitz et al, 2021). Although we further assessed interpersonal events and trauma-specific affect (e.g., disgust with self), these findings will be addressed in a future manuscript.…”

“…The AA protocol mirrored the protocol reported in S. E. Schmitz et al. (2021), except that we added several CM‐specific self‐report items to the random prompts. Over the 7‐day study period, participants answered six pseudorandomized prompts per day.…”

“…In line with this, laboratory studies in healthy participants have shown associations between NA and the evaluation of others as less trustworthy (Dunn & Schweitzer, 2005), reduced trust behavior in a trust game (Mislin et al., 2015), and negatively biased processing of facial emotional expressions (Schmid & Schmid Mast, 2010). Additionally, the findings from a recent daily life study suggest that behavioral distrust is increased in moments of heightened NA among individuals without mental health problems (S. E. Schmitz et al., 2021). If individuals with more severe CM showed higher interpersonal threat sensitivity and higher levels of behavioral distrust in daily life, and if momentary NA further strengthened this association as a relevant context variable, these associations could be addressed therapeutically to improve interpersonal functioning, which is often impaired in individuals with a history of CM (Pfaltz et al., 2022).…”

“…Consequently, the present study used ambulatory assessment (AA; Trull & Ebner‐Priemer, 2020) to investigate whether momentary NA provides a context for increased distrust and interpersonal threat sensitivity in the daily lives of individuals with a history of CM. We employed two experimental paradigms to measure behavioral distrust and interpersonal threat sensitivity, which were carefully established in a previous AA study with an independent sample of mentally healthy participants (S. E. Schmitz et al., 2021) and applied cross‐sectionally to a large web‐based sample of individuals with a CM history (Hepp et al., 2021). Thus, before applying the paradigms in this study, previous research had demonstrated both within‐participant outcome variance and between‐participant outcome variance, depending on the level of CM experienced.…”