A Tuesday in the life of a flourisher: The role of positive emotional reactivity in optimal mental health.

Our mind’s eye and the role of internal attention in mental life and suffering has intrigued scholars for centuries. Yet, experimental study of internal attention has been elusive due to our limited capacity to control the timing and content of internal stimuli. We thus developed the Simulated Thoughts Paradigm (STP) to experimentally deliver own-voice thought stimuli that simulate the content and experience of thinking and thereby experimental study of internal attentional processes. In independent experiments (N=122) integrating STP into established cognitive-experimental tasks, we found and replicated evidence that emotional reactivity to negative thoughts predicts difficulty disengaging internal attention from, as well as biased selective internal attention of, those thoughts, which predict cognitive vulnerability (e.g., negative repetitive thinking), which predicts anxiety and depression. Reported findings may have exciting implications for the study of internal attention broadly, models of internal attentional (dys)control in cognitive vulnerability and mental health more specifically.

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Simulating thoughts to measure and study internal attention in mental health

Scientific Reports ◽

10.1038/s41598-021-81756-w ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 11 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Iftach Amir ◽

Liad Ruimi ◽

Amit Bernstein

Keyword(s):

Mental Health ◽

Experimental Study ◽

Emotional Reactivity ◽

Cognitive Vulnerability ◽

Anxiety And Depression ◽

Attentional Processes ◽

Negative Thoughts ◽

Mind's Eye ◽

Internal Attention

AbstractOur mind’s eye and the role of internal attention in mental life and suffering has intrigued scholars for centuries. Yet, experimental study of internal attention has been elusive due to our limited capacity to control the timing and content of internal stimuli. We thus developed the Simulated Thoughts Paradigm (STP) to experimentally deliver own-voice thought stimuli that simulate the content and experience of thinking and thereby experimental study of internal attentional processes. In independent experiments (N = 122) integrating STP into established cognitive-experimental tasks, we found and replicated evidence that emotional reactivity to negative thoughts predicts difficulty disengaging internal attention from, as well as biased selective internal attention of, those thoughts; these internal attention processes predict cognitive vulnerability (e.g., negative repetitive thinking) which thereby predict anxiety and depression. Proposed methods and findings may have implications for the study of information processing and attention in mental health broadly and models of internal attentional (dys)control in cognitive vulnerability and mental health more specifically.

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The Role of Distress Disclosure Tendencies in the Experience and Expression of Laboratory-Induced Sadness

Journal of Individual Differences ◽

10.1027/1614-0001/a000222 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 38 (1) ◽

pp. 55-62 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Jeffrey H. Kahn ◽

Daniel W. Cox ◽

A. Myfanwy Bakker ◽

Julia I. O’Loughlin ◽

Agnieszka M. Kotlarczyk

Keyword(s):

Individual Differences ◽

Emotional Reactivity ◽

Subjective Experience ◽

Negative Emotion ◽

Theoretical Models ◽

Laboratory Research ◽

Emotion Words ◽

Distress Disclosure ◽

Computerized Text Analysis

Abstract. The benefits of talking with others about unpleasant emotions have been thoroughly investigated, but individual differences in distress disclosure tendencies have not been adequately integrated within theoretical models of emotion. The purpose of this laboratory research was to determine whether distress disclosure tendencies stem from differences in emotional reactivity or differences in emotion regulation. After completing measures of distress disclosure tendencies, social desirability, and positive and negative affect, 84 participants (74% women) were video recorded while viewing a sadness-inducing film clip. Participants completed post-film measures of affect and were then interviewed about their reactions to the film; these interviews were audio recorded for later coding and computerized text analysis. Distress disclosure tendencies were not predictive of the subjective experience of emotion, but they were positively related to facial expressions of sadness and happiness. Distress disclosure tendencies also predicted judges’ ratings of the verbal disclosure of emotion during the interview, but self-reported disclosure and use of positive and negative emotion words were not associated with distress disclosure tendencies. The authors present implications of this research for integrating individual differences in distress disclosure with models of emotion.

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