The affective shift model of work engagement.

On the basis of self-regulation theories, the authors develop an affective shift model of work engagement according to which work engagement emerges from the dynamic interplay of positive and negative affect. The affective shift model posits that negative affect is positively related to work engagement if negative affect is followed by positive affect. The authors applied experience sampling methodology to test the model. Data on affective events, mood, and work engagement was collected twice a day over 9 working days among 55 software developers. In support of the affective shift model, negative mood and negative events experienced in the morning of a working day were positively related to work engagement in the afternoon if positive mood in the time interval between morning and afternoon was high. Individual differences in positive affectivity moderated within-person relationships. The authors discuss how work engagement can be fostered through affect regulation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Examinations of chronic pain and affect relationships: Applications of a dynamic model of affect.

Two studies of the relationship between pain and negative affect are presented in this article: a study of weekly fluctuations in pain and negative affect among those with arthritis and a study of daily fluctuations in pain and negative affect for participants with fibromyalgia. The roles of positive affect and mood clarity (or the ability to distinguish between different emotions) in modifying the size of the relationship between pain and negative affect were examined in both studies as a means of testing the predictions of a dynamic model of affect regulation. In both studies, the presence of positive affect reduced the size of the relationship between pain and negative affect. Also, for arthritis participants with greater mood clarity, there was less overlap in ratings of negative and positive affective states. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Self-focused attention and negative affect: A meta-analysis.

This meta-analysis synthesized 226 effect sizes reflecting the relation between self-focused attention and negative affect (depression, anxiety, negative mood). The results demonstrate the multifaceted nature of self-focused attention and elucidate major controversies in the field. Overall, self-focus was associated with negative affect. Several moderators qualified this relationship. Self-focus and negative affect were more strongly related in clinical and female-dominated samples. Rumination yielded stronger effect sizes than nonruminative self-focus. Self-focus on positive self-aspects and following a positive event were related to lower negative affect. Most important, an interaction between foci of self-attention and form of negative affect was found: Private self-focus was more strongly associated with depression and generalized anxiety, whereas public self-focus was more strongly associated with social anxiety. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Fibromyalgia: The role of sleep in affect and in negative event reactivity and recovery.

Objective: Fibromyalgia (FM) syndrome is a chronic pain condition characterized by diffuse muscle pain, increased negative mood, and sleep disturbance. Until recently, sleep disturbance in persons with FM has been modeled as the result of the disease process or its associated pain. The current study examined sleep disturbance (i.e., sleep duration and sleep quality) as a predictor of daily affect, stress reactivity, and stress recovery. Design and Measures: A hybrid of daily diary and ecological momentary assessment methodology was used to evaluate the psychosocial functioning of 89 women with FM. Participants recorded numeric ratings of pain, fatigue, and positive and negative affect 3 times throughout the day for 30 consecutive days. At the end of each day, participants completed daily diary records of positive and negative life events. In addition, participants reported on their sleep duration and sleep quality each morning. Results: After accounting for the effects of positive events, negative events, and pain on daily affect scores, it was found that sleep duration and quality were prospectively related to affect and fatigue. Furthermore, the effects of inadequate sleep on negative affect were cumulative. In addition, an inadequate amount of sleep prevented affective recovery from days with a high number of negative events. Conclusions: These results lend support to the hypothesis that sleep is a component of allostatic load and has an upstream role in daily functioning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The role of awakening cortisol and psychological distress in diurnal variations in affect: A day reconstruction study.

People often feel unhappy in the morning but better later in the day, and this pattern may be amplified in the distressed. Past work suggests that one function of cortisol is to energize people in the morning. In a study of 174 students, we tested to see whether daily affect patterns, psychological distress, and awakening cortisol levels were interlinked. Affect levels were assessed using the Day Reconstruction Method and psychological distress was measured using the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales. On average, positive affect increased markedly in a linear pattern across the day, whereas negative affect decreased linearly. For the highly distressed, this pattern was stronger for positive affect. Lower than average morning cortisol, as assessed by two saliva samples at waking and two samples 30 min after waking, predicted a clear increasing pattern of positive affect throughout the day. When we examined the interlinkages between affect patterns, distress, and cortisol, our results showed that a pronounced linear increase in positive affect from morning through to evening occurred chiefly among distressed people with below average cortisol levels upon awakening. Psychological distress, although not strongly associated with morning cortisol levels, does appear to interact with cortisol levels to profoundly influence affect. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

For better or worse? Coregulation of couples’ cortisol levels and mood states.

Although a majority of adults live with a close relationship partner, little is known about whether and how partners’ momentary affect and physiology covary, or “coregulate.” This study used a dyadic multilevel modeling approach to explore the coregulation of spouses’ mood states and cortisol levels in 30 married couples who sampled saliva and reported on mood states 4 times per day for 3 days. For both husbands and wives, own cortisol level was positively associated with partner’s cortisol level, even after sampling time was controlled. For wives, marital satisfaction weakened the strength of this effect. Partner’s negative mood was positively associated with own negative mood for both husbands and wives. Marital satisfaction fully moderated this effect, reducing the strength of the association between one’s own and one’s partner’s negative mood states. Spouses’ positive moods were not correlated. As expected, within-couple coregulation coefficients were stronger when mood and cortisol were sampled in the early morning and evening, when spouses were together at home, than during the workday. The results suggest that spouses’ fluctuations in negative mood and cortisol levels are linked over several days and that marital satisfaction may buffer spouses from their partners’ negative mood or stress state. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Did you have a nice evening?" A day-level study on recovery experiences, sleep, and affect.

In this study, the authors used a within-person design to examine the relation between recovery experiences (psychological detachment, relaxation, mastery experiences) during leisure time, sleep, and affect in the next morning. Daily survey data gathered over the course of 1 work week from 166 public administration employees analyzed with a hierarchical linear modeling approach showed that low psychological detachment from work during the evening predicted negative activation and fatigue, whereas mastery experiences during the evening predicted positive activation and relaxation predicted serenity. Sleep quality showed relations with all affective states variables. This study adds to research on job-stress recovery and affect regulation by showing which specific experiences from the nonwork domain may improve affect before the start of the next working day. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A little bit louder now: Negative affect increases perceived loudness.

Traditionally, perception was considered to be an encapsulated process that was unaffected by top-down processes like affect. Recent work in vision draws this framework into question by showing that changes in the affective state of the perceiver can impact many different aspects of visual perception. Here, we extend the relationship between affect and perception into another perceptual modality: audition. Participants were induced into a negative or neutral mood by writing about a frightening or neutral experience in their past. They then listened to a series of short, neutral tones (320 and 640 ms) and rated the loudness and duration of the tones. Participants in a negative mood rated the tones as significantly louder, but not longer, than participants in a neutral mood, suggesting that the difference between the groups was perceptual rather than just a response bias. This research shows for the first time that the role of affect in perceptual processes may be more pervasive than previously considered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Affective experience in adulthood and old age: The role of affective arousal and perceived affect regulation.

The aim of the present study was to investigate age-related differences in self-reported affect in adulthood. Measurement of affect encompassed high- and low-arousal positive and negative affect. The sample consisted of 277 participants who were between 20 and 80 years old. Older participants showed a higher level of low-arousal positive affect and did not significantly differ from the two younger age groups in high-arousal positive affect. Both high- and low-arousal negative affect decreased from middle to older adulthood. Only partially are these age effects explained by sociodemographic characteristics, education, or self-reported health and personality. The perceived regulation of affect in the face of difficulties or threatening situations emerged as a central mediator in the association between age and the three age-graded facets of affect. In contrast, future time perspective had no mediating effect on the age–affect relationship. Results suggest that age-related advantages in perceived affect regulation seem to be one central component of resilience in old age. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Diurnal mood variation in major depressive disorder.

Depression disturbs mood, but a clear picture of diurnal mood rhythms in depression has yet to emerge. This study examined variations in positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA), two dimensions of mood that generate diurnal patterns among healthy individuals. Repeated measurements of NA and PA in daily life were obtained over 6 days from 47 depressed outpatients and 39 healthy individuals using the Experience Sampling Method. Relative to healthy individuals, depressed individuals exhibited increasing PA levels during the day with a later acrophase. In contrast, depressed persons' NA exhibited a more pronounced diurnal rhythm and was more variable from moment to moment than healthy individuals'. Ambulatory mood measurements in depression suggest distinct diurnal disturbances of positive and negative affect. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Individual differences in negative affect repair.

The extant literature implicates affect repair ability as one source of individual differences in negative affect. Emerging from this literature are three regulatory traits that should predict repair ability (negative mood regulation expectancies, monitoring, labeling), yet no experimental examination of this possibility exists. Two studies explored this issue. Participants (Ns = 305, 146) watched negative affect-inducing videos and completed a repair or control writing task, before and after which they reported their affect. Results revealed wide individual differences in repair ability. Specifically, participants with high expectancies of repair success and those who attend to and understand their affect experienced the largest decreases in negative affect and largest increases in positive affect following the repair tasks. These findings advance understanding of individual differences in affect regulation and have implications for future research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interpersonal problems and negative mood as predictors of within-day time to drinking.

Using data collected via handheld electronic diaries (EDs), we examined within-day associations between early-day negative moods and stress and subsequent time to drinking. A sample of 97 (n = 48 women) adults recruited to participate in a drinking-reduction intervention study used EDs to record mood and interpersonal problems at randomly selected times during each of 3 reporting intervals and drinking as it occurred each day for 21 days. Using multilevel hazard models, we tested associations between early-day stress/negative mood ratings and time to drinking as well as potential moderating effects of drinking to cope (DTC) motives on these associations. Whereas previous analyses of these data showed no associations between early-day negative moods and number of drinks consumed later in the day, here we found significant associations between negative moods and time to drinking. Associations involving negative moods, DTC, and hazard for drinking varied depending on time of day, and some mood effects were moderated by DTC. These findings suggest that time to drinking may be more sensitive to the effects of acute negative mood states than is drinking quantity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Savoring Versus Dampening: Self-Esteem Differences in Regulating Positive Affect.

Five studies examined the hypotheses that when people experience positive affect, those low in self-esteem are especially likely to dampen that affect, whereas those high in self-esteem are especially likely to savor it. Undergraduate participants' memories for a positive event (Study 1) and their reported reactions to a success (Study 2) supported the dampening prediction. Results also suggest that dampening was associated with worse mood the day after a success (Study 2), that positive and negative affect regulation are distinct, that self-esteem is associated with affect regulation even when Neuroticism and Extraversion are controlled (Studies 3 and 4), and that self-esteem may be especially important for certain types of positive events and positive affect regulation (Study 5). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Positive affect and the experience of meaning in life.

Six studies examined the role of positive affect (PA) in the experience of meaning in life (MIL). Study 1 showed strong relations between measures of mood, goal appraisals, and MIL. In multivariate analyses, PA was a stronger predictor of MIL than goal appraisals. In Study 2, the most consistent predictor of the experience of meaning in a day was the PA experienced that day. Later, global MIL was predicted by average daily PA, rather than average daily MIL. Study 3 demonstrated no prospective relations between measures of MIL and PA over 2 years. In Study 4, priming positive mood concepts enhanced MIL. In Study 5, manipulated positive mood enhanced ratings of MIL for those who were not given an attributional cue for their moods. In Study 6, PA was associated with a high level of distinction between meaningful and meaningless activities. Results indicate that positive moods may predispose individuals to feel that life is meaningful. In addition, positive moods may increase sensitivity to the meaning-relevance of a situation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Subjective and Reinforcing Effects of Smoking During Negative Mood Induction.

Two notions strongly held by many smokers are that negative mood increases smoking behavior and that this increase is due to the ability of smoking to alleviate negative affect. This study used a modified mood induction procedure to examine both the impact of smoking on induced mood, as well as the effect of induced mood on actual smoking behavior. Forty-eight smokers were randomly assigned to a smoking or a water-drinking comparison group. Each participant attended 3 sessions during which 1 of 3 mood states (positive, negative, or neutral) was induced. Contrary to expectation, smoking did not attenuate negative affect. However, negative mood induction subsequently quickened latency to smoke and increased number of puffs consumed ad lib. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mood changes associated with blood glucose fluctuations in insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus.

Examined relationships between blood glucose (BG) levels and self-reported mood in 34 19–68 yr old insulin-independent diabetes mellitus patients. Four times each day, Ss completed a mood/symptom checklist before a self-measurement of BG until 40 checklists had been completed. Half the items of the checklist described physical symptoms, and half described mood states. Within-S correlations and regressions showed that moods were related to BG for the majority of Ss and that, like physical symptoms, mood–BG relationships were idiosyncratic. Low BG levels were associated with negative mood states; positive mood items were almost always associated with high BG. High BG levels also frequently correlated with negative mood states, although the negative mood items that related to high glucose (anger, sadness) differed from those that tended to relate to low BG. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The association between adolescents’ depressive symptoms, maternal negative affect, and family relationships in Hong Kong: Cross-sectional and longitudinal findings.

This study investigated the bidirectional relationships of adolescents’ and maternal mood, and the moderating effect by gender and perceived family relationships on these relationships. Data were obtained from 626 adolescent-mother dyads and follow-up data were collected one year later from a subset. Adolescents reported their depressive symptoms, and their mothers reported their negative affect. Adolescents described their perception of family relationships. Maternal negative affect and adolescents’ depressive symptoms were significantly correlated at baseline. This association was moderated by gender and family relationships. The association was stronger in mother-daughter compared to mother-son dyads. In families where relationships were reported to be poor, adolescent depressive symptoms were uniformly high, regardless of maternal negative affect. However, in families where relationships were good, maternal negative affect was associated with higher adolescents’ depressive symptoms. In longitudinal analyses, adolescents’ mood at baseline was found to relate to maternal negative affect at follow-up. Family relationships at baseline were also associated with adolescents’ depressive symptoms at follow-up. However, there was no prediction from maternal negative affect at baseline to adolescents’ depressive symptoms at follow-up. Gender and quality of family relationships did not moderate the longitudinal relationships between adolescents’ depressive symptoms and maternal negative affect in either direction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sleep and the affective response to stress and pain.

Objective: The current study examined sleep disturbance (i.e., sleep duration, sleep quality) as a correlate of stress reactivity and pain reactivity. Design and Outcome Measures: An ecological momentary assessment design was used to evaluate the psychosocial functioning of men and women with fibromyalgia or rheumatoid arthritis (N = 49). Participants recorded numeric ratings of pain, the occurrence of a stressful event, as well as positive and negative affect 7 times throughout the day for 2 consecutive days. In addition, participants reported on their sleep duration and sleep quality each morning. Results: Sleep disruption was not found to be an independent predictor of affect. However, sleep was found to buffer the relationship between stress and negative affect and the relationship between pain and both positive and negative affect. Conclusion: These results are consistent with a model in which good-quality sleep acts as a biobehavioral resource that minimizes allostatic load. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Negative Affect and Smoking Lapses: A Prospective Analysis.

Relapse is a central problem in smoking treatment. Data collected at the time of relapse episodes indicate that stress and negative affect (NA) promote relapse, but retrospective data are potentially biased. The authors performed a prospective analysis of stress and NA prior to initial lapses in smokers (N = 215). Day-to-day changes in stress (daily negative and positive events and Perceived Stress Scale scores) and NA (multiple momentary affect ratings) did not predict lapse risk on the following day. However, within the lapse day itself, NA was already significantly increasing hours before lapses, but only for episodes attributed to stress or bad mood. Thus, rapid increases in NA, but not slow-changing shifts in stress and NA, were associated with relapse. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Alcohol with a meal has no adverse effects on postprandial glucose homeostasis in diabetic patients

OBJECTIVE: To examine the effect of moderate alcohol intake with a meal on glucose homeostasis in diabetic patients. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: Alcohol (1 g/kg, an aperitif before, wine during, and a drink after a meal) or an equal amount of mineral water was given during a dinner. Blood glucose and insulin concentrations were measured before, during, and after the meal until the next morning. This study was conducted at the Helsinki University Hospital Metabolic Ward and the Finnish Diabetes Association Education Center. The participants in the study included 10 type I diabetic patients treated with insulin and 16 type II diabetic patients treated with diet alone or with diet and oral drugs. In each subject, we examined hypoglycemic episodes or differences in blood glucose or serum insulin concentrations between alcohol and the control study. RESULTS: In type I diabetic patients, blood glucose and insulin concentrations were virtually identical in both studies. In type II diabetic patients, alcohol slightly enhanced the meal-induced insulin secretion resulting in lower blood glucose concentrations next morning. No hypoglycemic glucose concentrations were observed in either group after alcohol ingestion. CONCLUSIONS: Moderate alcohol intake with a meal does not lead to hypo- or hyperglycemia in diabetic patients.