Depressive symptoms predict inflexibly high levels of experiential avoidance in response to daily negative affect: a daily diary study

Experiential avoidance (EA) is an emotion-regulation strategy used to control or avoid unpleasant internal experiences. Despite the important role of avoidance in depressive disorders, there is relatively little research directly examining the role of EA in the development and maintenance of depression, and most of this research relies on measurement of EA as a global and stable personality trait. In this study we sought to extend the research on EA and depression by using a daily diary design and multilevel analysis to examine how the daily relationship between EA and negative affect (NA) varies as a function of baseline depressive symptoms. In order to achieve this goal we created a new state measure of EA assessing several avoidant behaviors. The findings revealed that participants with more depressive symptoms used more daily EA overall. Additionally, the difference in daily EA between those with higher versus lower depressive symptoms was greater on days when participants experienced less NA. This moderation effect was found only concurrently whereas one-day lagged analysis failed to reveal this effect. These findings provide preliminary support for the hypothesis that depression is associated with an inflexibly high level of avoidant emotion regulation.     

Subjective distress associated with chronic stuttering

Stuttering is a chronic condition involving involuntary disruption to speech fluency. While elevated social anxiety has been found to be a risk factor for adults who have stuttered all their lives, it is unclear how stuttering influences other negative mood states such as interpersonal sensitivity and depressive mood. Consequently, controlled research was conducted that investigated negative affectivity across a number of domains in adults who stutter. Participants included 200 adults who have stuttered since childhood, with comparisons made to 200 non-stuttering controls of similar age and sex. The adults who stuttered were found to have significantly elevated levels of distress and negative mood states compared to the controls. As expected, significant differences were found for anxiety, however, significant and substantial differences were also found across a broad range of negative affect, including dimensions such as somatization, interpersonal sensitivity, depressive mood, hostility and paranoia. The implications of these findings for the better management of stuttering are discussed.Educational objectives: The reader will be able to describe: (a) the negative impact of a chronic disorder like stuttering on people who have stuttered all their life; (b) the factor structure of the SCL-90-R; (c) the negative affectivity construct, and (d) the difference between psychogenic theories of stuttering and neurological theories of stuttering.     

Positive affect increases cognitive control in the antisaccade task

To delineate the modulatory effects of induced positive affect on cognitive control, the current study investigated whether positive affect increases the ability to suppress a reflexive saccade in the antisaccade task. Results of the antisaccade task showed that participants made fewer erroneous prosaccades in the condition in which a positive mood was induced compared to the neutral condition (i.e. in which no emotional mood was induced). This improvement of oculomotor inhibition was restricted to saccades with an express latency. These results are in line with the idea that enhanced performance in the positive affect condition could be caused by increased dopaminergic neurotransmission the brain.     

Thinking styles and risky decision‐making: Further exploration of the affect–probability weighting link

People usually overweight small probabilities and underweight large probabilities leading to the familiar inverse S‐shaped weighting function. This research explores the link between affect and the structure of probability weighting from the perspective of thinking dispositions, a concept central to dual system theories of reasoning. The effects of affective priming and cognitive load on both probability weighting and the value function are also examined. The evidence suggests that thinking styles do have predictive implications for risky decision‐making. Participants with a more affective thinking style tend to be more risk‐seeking in small probability gambles. However, increasing access to the affective system by affective priming or cognitive load manipulations tend to reduce risk‐seeking behavior in small probability gambles as well as reduce risk averse behavior in large probability gambles. Previous research, manipulating the affective nature of lottery outcomes, found evidence for an increase in curvature (more overweighting of small probabilities and more underweighting of large probabilities) of the weighting function for affect‐rich outcomes, lending support to a hope‐and‐fear deconstruction of probability weighting. The present research suggests that increased anticipatory emotions characterized by the elevation of the weighting function (more overweighting at all probabilities) is also important and could sometimes be more significant than hope‐and‐fear in decision‐making under risk. An integrated approach incorporating the impact of affect on all three, the elevation and curvature of probability weighting as well as the curvature of the value function explains the empirical findings. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Role of Dysphoria in Social Thinking and Behaviour

In response to Palermo (2016, Australian Psychologist, in press) comments, some aspects of the target paper are further elaborated here. In particular, given Palermo's timely emphasis on the potential social and cultural implications of research demonstrating the beneficial consequences of negative affect, the historical background, and practical implications of the experimental evidence are elaborated. Furthermore, the reviewer also comments on the applicability of alternative theoretical conceptualizations to the data reported here, and this issue also receives further attention. Overall, it is concluded that there is now strong and convergent evidence for the often beneficial consequences of mild negative affect, and these findings deserve serious consideration in practical applications of psychology, and in our conceptions of what represents a healthy and balanced emotional life. Embracing and accepting periods of negative affectivity should be recognised as a normal and healthy part of the human condition, and the cultural bias towards positive affect should be tempered by an appreciation of the adaptive benefits of dysphoria.     

The Function of Moods and Emotions: Comment on “Can Sadness Be Good for You? On the Cognitive,Motivational and Interpersonal Benefits of Mild Negative Affect” (Forgas, 2017)

Evolutionary theories suggest that all affective states have a function. The fascinating review “Can Sadness Be Good for You? On the Cognitive, Motivational and Interpersonal Benefits of Mild Negative Affect” by Joseph Forgas is a welcome reminder that happiness is not the be all and end all—sadness can also be beneficial. In this commentary, I summarise the studies conducted by Forgas et al. that demonstrate the benefit of mild negative affect for memory, judgement, motivation, and interpersonal behaviour (and those that do not), link them to current theories and models, and discuss avenues for future research.     

Supervising away from home: clinical,cultural and professional challenges

This paper explores some challenges of supervising clinical work of trainees, known as ‘routers’, who live in countries with diverse cultural, social and political traditions, and the analysts who travel to supervise them. It is written as an evolving dialogue between the authors, who explore together the effects of their own culture of origin, and in particular the legacy and values of their own training institutes on the styles and models of analytic supervision. Their dialogue is framed around the meaning of home and experiences of homesickness for analysts working away from home in an interactive field of strangeness in countries where analytical psychology is a relatively new discipline. The authors outline the findings from their own qualitative survey, where other supervisors working abroad, and those they have supervised, describe their experiences and their encounters with difference. The dialogue ends with both authors discussing what they have learned about teaching and supervising abroad, the implications for more flexible use of Jungian concepts, and how such visits have changed their clinical practice in their home countries.     

Developing a Career Counseling Intervention Program for Foster Youth

Former foster youth often experience difficulty finding and maintaining employment as they emancipate from state care. Research highlights this fact by consistently reporting on the bleak employment outcomes of former foster youth; however, virtually no studies have given practical guidance to practitioners on how to develop interventions. This article addresses this gap in the literature by providing practitioners with a detailed outline of a career counseling group intervention program for foster youth. A brief review of the literature informing this intervention program is also presented.     

The Role of the Relationship with Parents with Respect to Work Orientation and Work Ethic

We examined the extent to which individual relationships with mother and father, social support from partner, and quality of the relationship with the partner, are related to work orientation and work ethic. Survey data were obtained from 3841 respondents from the Netherlands Kinship Panel Study (wave 2). The results showed that, overall, people with a more positive relationship with their parents had a more positive work orientation and a stronger work ethic. A positive relationship with the father had a greater influence on these work aspects than a positive relationship with the mother, particularly for men. Partner support and the quality of the partner relationship partially mediated the association between the relationship with one's parents and work orientation only for women. There were no significant relationships between partner support or the quality of the partner relationship, and work ethic. Research on the relationship with parents and work-related variables is discussed.     

Behind the wheel: What drives the effects of error handling?

Existing research comparing error management (a strategy focusing on increasing the positive and decreasing the negative consequences of errors) to error prevention (a strategy focusing on working faultlessly), has identified error management as beneficial for multiple outcomes. Yet, due to various methodological limitations, it is unclear whether the effects previously found are due to error prevention, error management, or both. We examine this in an experimental study with a 2 (error prevention: yes vs. no) × 2 (error management: yes vs. no) factorial design. Error prevention had negative effects on cognition and adaptive transfer performance. Error management alleviated worry and boosted one’s perceived self-efficacy. Overall, the results show that error prevention and error management have unique outcomes on negative affect, self-efficacy, cognition, and performance.