Emotional Inertia is Associated with Lower Well-Being when Controlling for Differences in Emotional Context.

Peter Koval,Peter Kuppens,Stefan Sütterlin

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01997

Peter Koval, Peter Kuppens + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01997

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Abstract

Previous studies have linked higher emotional inertia (i.e., a stronger autoregressive slope of emotions) with lower well-being. We aimed to replicate these findings, while extending upon previous research by addressing a number of unresolved issues and controlling for potential confounds. Specifically, we report results from two studies (Ns = 100 and 202) examining how emotional inertia, assessed in response to a standardized sequence of emotional stimuli in the lab, correlates with several measures of well-being. The current studies build on previous research by examining how inertia of both positive emotions (PE) and negative emotions (NE) relates to positive (e.g., life satisfaction) and negative (e.g., depressive symptoms) indicators of well-being, while controlling for between-person differences in the mean level and variability of emotions. Our findings replicated previous research and further revealed that (a) NE inertia was more strongly associated with lower well-being than PE inertia; (b) emotional inertia correlated more consistently with negative indicators (e.g., depressive symptoms) than positive indicators (e.g., life satisfaction) of well-being; and (c) these relationships were independent of individual differences in mean level and variability of emotions. We conclude, in line with recent findings, that higher emotional inertia, particularly of NE, may be an indicator of increased vulnerability to depression.

Highlights

Emotions are not static, but are rather characterized by frequent ups and downs (Frijda, 2007; Scherer, 2009)
Given that trait levels of positive and negative emotions are known to correlate with other indicators of well-being and psychological functioning (e.g., Watson et al, 1988a), it is important to control for individual differences in mean level of emotions when studying patterns of emotion dynamics, such as emotional inertia (Trull et al, 2015)
Following Hamaker and Grasman (2015), lagged predictors were entered uncentered in these initial analyses to obtain unbiased estimates of average emotional inertia levels in each sample

Summary

Introduction

But are rather characterized by frequent ups and downs (Frijda, 2007; Scherer, 2009). Given the ubiquity of emotions in human functioning, emotional flexibility would be expected to relate to a wide range of well-being measures This view is supported by a growing number of studies linking higher emotional inertia with various indicators of maladjustment, including neuroticism (Suls et al, 1998), low self-esteem (Kuppens et al, 2010a), impaired social functioning (Fairbairn and Sayette, 2013), habitual rumination (Koval et al, 2012; Brose et al, 2014), elevated depressive symptoms (Wenze et al, 2009; Koval and Kuppens, 2012; Koval et al, 2012, 2013; Brose et al, 2014), and increased risk of Major Depressive Disorder (Kuppens et al, 2012; van de Leemput et al, 2014)

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