Objective: The present study sought to 1) examine the measurement of emotional complexity (EC) by examining the associations among different indicators of EC (i.e., covariation between positive affect and negative affect; overall, negative, and positive granularity; overall, negative, and positive differentiation) derived from the same data set and identifying a latent factor structure; and 2) evaluate the predictive ability of EC on psychological distress, emotional well-being, and physical functioning while accounting for stressful contexts. The utility of assessing emotion diversity (ED) as another aspect of EC was also explored.

Methods: 191 middle-aged adults from a community-based study on resilience were asked to complete 30 daily diaries assessing positive and negative affect. At least 6 months later, participants completed a phone interview that assessed distress (i.e., depressive and anxiety symptoms), well-being (i.e., WHO-5 well-being, vitality, social functioning), physical functioning, and perceived stress.

Results: A three-factor solution with latent factors representing overall, negative, and positive EC was identified. Overall EC significantly predicted enhanced physical functioning, but was not associated with distress or well-being. Contrary to study hypotheses, positive and negative EC were not associated with future distress, well-being, or physical functioning, though a trend toward improved physical functioning was noted for positive EC. In contrast, positive and negative ED were both associated with less distress, and better well-being and physical functioning. Overall ED was unexpectedly related to worse outcomes (i.e., more distress, less well-being, decreased physical functioning). Stress did not moderate the relationship between emotional complexity and the outcome variables.

Conclusions: Different indicators of EC represent distinct aspects of emotional experience. Partial support of the hypotheses found. Physical functioning was the only outcome influenced by EC. The inclusion of stress did not change the results. The discrepancy between the findings and those in the literature may be related to reliability of EC indicators and absence of contextual factors. Further exploration of ED revealed a potentially important construct of emotional experience that is deserving of further inquiry.

Fibromyalgia (FM) is a chronic pain condition characterized by debilitating fatigue. This study examined the dynamic relation between interpersonal enjoyment and fatigue in 102 partnered and 74 unpartnered women with FM. Participants provided three daily ratings for 21 days. They rated their fatigue in late morning and at the end of the day. Both partnered and unpartnered participants reported their interpersonal enjoyment in the combined familial, friendship, and work domains (COMBINED domain) in the afternoon. Additionally, partnered participants reported their interpersonal enjoyment in the spousal domain. The study was guided by three hypotheses at the within-person level, based on daily diaries: (1) elevated late morning fatigue would predict diminished afternoon interpersonal enjoyment; (2) diminished interpersonal enjoyment would predict elevated end-of-day fatigue; (3) interpersonal enjoyment would mediate the late morning to end-of-day fatigue relationship. In cross-level models, the study explored whether individual differences (between-person) in late morning fatigue and afternoon interpersonal enjoyment would moderate within-person relations from late morning fatigue to afternoon interpersonal enjoyment, and from afternoon interpersonal enjoyment to end-of-day fatigue. Furthermore, it explored whether the hypothesized relationships at the within-person level would also emerge at the between-person level (between-person mediation models). Multilevel structural equation modeling and multilevel modeling were employed for model testing, separately for partnered and unpartnered participants. Within-person mediation models supported that on high fatigue mornings, afternoon interpersonal enjoyment was dampened in the spousal and combined domains in partnered and unpartnered samples. Moreover, low afternoon interpersonal enjoyment in both the spousal and combined domains predicted elevated end-of-day fatigue. Afternoon interpersonal enjoyment mediated the relationship of late morning to end-of-day fatigue in the combined domain but in not the spousal domain. Cross-level moderation analyses showed that individual differences in afternoon spousal enjoyment moderated the day-to-day relation between afternoon spousal enjoyment and end-of-day fatigue. Finally, the mediational chain was not observed at the between-person level. These findings suggest that preserving interpersonal enjoyment in non-spousal relations limits within-day increases in FM fatigue. They highlight the importance of examining domain-specificity in interpersonal enjoyment when studying fatigue, and suggest that targeting enjoyment in social relations may improve the efficacy of existing treatments.

This study examined whether cognitive behavioral therapy and mindfulness interventions affect positive (PA) and negative affect (NA) reports for patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) before, during, and after stress induction. The study also investigated the effects of a history of recurrent depression on intervention effects and testing effects due to the Solomon-6 study design utilized. The 144 RA patients were assessed for a history of major depressive episodes by diagnostic interview and half of the participants completed a laboratory study before the intervention began. The RA patients were randomly assigned to 1 of 3 treatments: cognitive behavioral therapy for pain (P), mindfulness meditation and emotion regulation therapy (M), or education only attention control group (E). Upon completion of the intervention, 128 of the RA patients participated in a laboratory session designed to induce stress in which they were asked to report on their PA and NA throughout the laboratory study. Patients in the M group exhibited dampened negative and positive affective reactivity to stress, and sustained PA at recovery, compared to the P and E groups. PA increased in response to induced stress for all groups, suggesting an "emotional immune response." History of recurrent depression increased negative affective reactivity, but did not predict reports of PA. RA patients who underwent a pre-intervention laboratory study showed less reactivity to stressors for both NA and PA during the post-intervention laboratory study. The M intervention demonstrated dampened emotional reactions to stress and lessened loss of PA after stress induction, displaying active emotion regulation in comparison to the other groups. These findings provide additional information about the effects of mindfulness on the dynamics of affect and adaptation to stress in chronic pain patients.