When Feelings Lack Precision: Low Positive and Negative Emotion Differentiation and Depressive Symptoms in Daily Life

Starr, Lisa R.; Hershenberg, Rachel; Li, Y. Irina; Shaw, Zoey A.

doi:10.1177/2167702617694657

Cited by 65 publications

(135 citation statements)

References 98 publications

(133 reference statements)

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“…A related view is that negative emotions are not well-differentiated in infancy. This stands in contrast to neurophysiological findings suggesting that categorical emotion patterns are detectable in adults (Wager et al, 2015) and that even among adults, differentiation of negative emotion varies among individuals, with poor differentiation associated with greater emotional/psychological risk (Starr, Hershenberg, Li, & Shaw, 2017).…”

Section: Introductioncontrasting

confidence: 98%

Anger, sad, and blended expressions to contingency disruption in young infants

Sullivan

2018

Developmental Psychobiology

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Three studies elicited young infants' (aged 17-23 weeks) anger and sad facial expressions during brief contingency disruptions to explore their potential organization over time as a biphasic process. Study 1 examined partial correlations among anger, sad, blended anger/sad, and neutral expressions during extinction in three extant, independently recruited samples. Across samples, all three negative expressions were inversely related to neutral expressions, but anger and sad expressions were not significantly correlated when anger/sad blends were controlled. Study 2 compared expressions during contingency and disruption minutes in two groups: one in which the disruption was an extinction phase (the absence of the formerly contingent event), or one in which the disruption was noncontingent presentations of the stimuli. Study 3 examined expression trajectories over time in two contingency and extinction sessions. Independent trajectories of anger and sad expressions occurred over time in Studies 2 and 3. Extinction and noncontingency differed in sad expression. The relation between expressions and blends also varied over time.

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Section: Introductioncontrasting

confidence: 98%

Anger, sad, and blended expressions to contingency disruption in young infants

Sullivan

2018

Developmental Psychobiology

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“…One hundred and twelve persons decided to continue to participate in the second daily diary phase. Similar to the approach used by Starr, Hershenberg, Li, and Shaw (2017) , an ICC was calculated for a participant if he or she had reported at least four negative events during the daily assessment phase. The data of 48 participants were excluded following this criterion.…”

Section: Studymentioning

confidence: 99%

Development of a Novel Method of Emotion Differentiation That Uses Open-Ended Descriptions of Momentary Affective States

Ottenstein

Lischetzke

2019

Assessment

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In every language, many words can be used to describe how someone feels at a certain moment. Yet not everyone makes use of this rich emotion vocabulary in everyday life when talking about his or her feelings. Whereas some individuals tend to use specific and discrete emotion terms (e.g., "sad" or "frustrated") to describe an emotional experience, others tend to use broader terms (e.g., "bad" or "negative") that mainly communicate displeasure or pleasure. These individual differences have been called emotion differentiation (ED; Feldman Barrett, Gross, Christensen, & Benvenuto, 2001) or emotional granularity (e.g., Tugade, Fredrickson, & Feldman Barrett, 2004). According to these theoretical approaches, individuals with high ED are able to generate a distinctive, granular, and precise representation of their emotional experience, whereas individuals with low ED use terms that are located along a single dimension of pleasantness-unpleasantness (Feldman Barrett, 1998; Feldman Barrett et al., 2001). In the present article, we aim to present a novel method for assessing ED that more closely reflects this definition of the construct than other measures that have been previously proposed. Before we discuss how ED can be measured and present the rationale behind our novel method, we summarize theoretical considerations about ED's role in the emotion-regulation process and its relation to subjective well-being. These theoretical considerations will be relevant for deducting hypotheses on the predictive validity of methods assessing ED. The Functionality of Emotion Differentiation for Emotion Regulation and Well-Being As Kashdan, Feldman Barrett, and McKnight (2015) have argued, the use of specific, differentiated emotion words conveys important information about an emotion-eliciting event. According to this information, individuals who label their emotional experiences with specific terms can regulate their intense negative emotions more effectively, are better able to pursue personal strivings, and finally, are able to achieve greater well-being. These assumptions are in line with the feelings-as-information theory (Schwarz, 1990), which posits that people use emotions as a source of information about themselves or about their environment and 839138A SMXXX10.

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“…Furthermore, it was found that in non-clinical samples less negative emotion differentiation was related to elevated levels of depressive symptoms (Erbas et al, 2014;Plonsker et al, 2016;Starr et al, 2017). Lennarz and colleagues (2017) found that more negative emotion differentiation was correlated with less intense negative emotions, but they did not find significant correlations between emotion differentiation and depressive symptoms.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%