The perils of murky emotions: Emotion differentiation moderates the prospective relationship between naturalistic stress exposure and adolescent depression.

Abstract

Negative emotion differentiation (NED) refers to the ability to identify and label discrete negative emotions. Low NED has been previously linked to depression and other indices of low psychological well-being. However, this construct has rarely been explored during adolescence, a time of escalating depression risk, or examined in the context of naturalistic stressors. Further, the association between NED and depression has never been tested longitudinally. We propose a diathesis-stress model wherein low NED amplifies the association between stressful life events (SLEs) and depression. A sample of 233 community-recruited midadolescents (Mage 15.90 years, 54% female) completed diagnostic interviews and reported on mood and daily stressors 4 times per day for 7 days. SLEs were assessed using a semistructured interview with diagnosis-blind team coding based on the contextual threat method. Follow-up interviews were conducted 1.5 years after baseline. Low NED was correlated with depression but did not predict prospective changes in depression as a main effect. Confirming predictions and supporting a diathesis-stress model, low NED predicted (a) within-subjects associations between daily hassles and momentary depressed mood, (b) between-subjects associations between SLE severity and depression, and (c) prospective associations between SLE severity and increases in depression at follow-up. Results were specific to negative (vs. positive) emotion differentiation. Results suggest that low NED is primarily depressogenic in the context of high stress exposure.

Idiographic network analysis of discrete mood states prior to treatment

“…Emotion differentiation has been shown to moderate aggressive behaviours in angry individuals, such that those with poorer emotion differentiation report greater provocation in daily life and greater aggressive tendencies (Pond et al, ). Further, recent work demonstrates that poor emotion differentiation moderates the relationship between life stress and depression in an adolescent sample (Starr et al, ). Crucially, emotion differentiation has been shown to improve with clinical intervention: as one example, a mindfulness‐based intervention was recently shown to increase emotion differentiation (Van der Gucht et al, ).…”

High emotion differentiation buffers against internalizing symptoms following exposure to stressful life events in adolescence: An intensive longitudinal study

“…The current study conceptually replicates these findings (an important scientific pursuit; Zwaan, Etz, Lucas, & Donnellan, 2017) and provides several key methodological extensions. First, as compared to 7 days of experience sampling and a single follow-up session 1.5 years later (Starr et al, 2019), we replicate the stress-buffering role of emotion differentiation at the momentary level using much more intensive sampling of stress and affect over a longer period of time (i.e., four months of sampling spread over a year), providing greater confidence in the results given the thousands of withinperson observations collected in the current study. Second, we extend the between-person finding that high emotion differentiation reduces the association of stressful life events and depression to the within-person level using an intensive longitudinal design assessing stressful life events using an objective gold-standard interview and measures of clinical symptoms at the monthly level.…”

“…Finally, the current study examined how emotion differentiation related to broader internalizing problems, as opposed to focusing on symptoms of depression alone. Whereas many studies have examined emotion differentiation specifically in relation to depression (Demiralp et al, 2012;Erbas et al, 2019Erbas et al, , 2014Kalokerinos et al, 2019;Liu, Gilbert, & Thompson, 2020;Mankus, Boden, & Thompson, 2016;Starr, Hershenberg, Li, & Shaw, 2017;Starr et al, 2019;Willroth, Flett, & Mauss, 2019), only a single study has examined emotion differentiation in generalized anxiety disorder (Decker, Turk, Hess, & Murray, 2008). Interestingly, that study found that mean levels of emotion differentiation do not differ between individuals who do or do not have generalized anxiety disorder.…”

“…Similarly, we find no main effect of emotion differentiation on generalized anxiety symptoms in our sample. However, the interaction between stress and emotion differentiation predicting anxiety suggests that the association of emotion differentiation with symptoms of anxiety may only emerge at certain levels of stress exposure (see Starr et al, 2019, for a similar result in depression).…”

Community‐Based Participatory Research: Engaging Youth to Provide Perspective on Risk and Protective Factors

“…In one study, students were more likely to change how they feel after recognizing their emotions. 20 This research highlights the need to hire more professionals to assist students in understanding how they feel to help aide in addressing depression. One way to meet these needs in schools includes more on-site services provided by community and national organizations and increasing the number of school psychologists, counselors, and other mental health professionals.…”