Affective Profiling to Determine Propensity for Empowerment or Disempowerment: Protective Attributes or Afflictive Proclivities in Depressive States and Well-Being

Abstract

A plethora of studies focusing on affective personality attributes, positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA), have measured ubiquitously self-reports of the Positive Affect and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS), forming the basis of prevailing notions regarding health and well-being over different ethnical populations, gender and clinical and healthy volunteer populations [1-27]. Invariably, these studies have measured participants’ self-reported feelings of enthusiasm, activity, feelings of duty, control, strong, proud (i.e., PA) linking them to wellbeing, proneness to frequent exercise and agentic, cooperative, and spiritual behaviors (e.g., self-acceptance, goal-orientations, empathy, helpfulness, seeking support in faith, meaningfulness). In contrast, feelings such as anger, guilt, shame contempt, and distress (i.e., NA) are associated with anxiety, depressiveness, ill-being, rumination, inaction (e.g., low exercise frequency and passive leisure activities such as watching TV) and health problems [28-32]. These studies show that PA and NA ought to be viewed as separate entities [33], despite the temptation to view them as opposite poles on a continuum.