Sadness, but not anger or fear, mediates the long-term leisure-cognition link: an emotion-specific approach

ABSTRACT

Past research has provided some evidence of positive relationships between leisure and cognitive functioning, but questions remain regarding their mechanisms. We argue that specific negative emotions may provide promising theoretical mechanisms for the leisure-cognition link. Guided by theories of leisure and emotion-specificity, we used a large-sample, longitudinal dataset of adult participants (N = 3536; 1940 females; M_age = 56.16) to examine the leisure-cognition link over about a decade and to test whether sadness, anger, or fear would be supported as emotion-specific mediators of the leisure-cognition link. Analyses were performed using observed variable path analyses and latent variable structural equation modelling. Controlling for demographics (age, gender, education level) and baseline cognitive functioning, leisure predicted better episodic memory and executive function a decade later. Moreover, both observed variable and latent variable mediational analyses supported sadness as a mediator of the link between leisure and episodic memory as well as executive function, such that leisure predicted reduced sadness, in turn predicting improved cognitive functioning. In contrast, neither fear nor anger were supported as mediators of the leisure-cognition link. Thus, the results support long-term links between leisure and cognitive functioning and also support sadness as an emotion-specific mediator of these relationships.

KEYWORDS:

• Cognitive functioning
• negative emotion
• emotion-specificity
• leisure
• mediation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The key results remained unchanged with or without addressing missing data using full-information maximum likelihood (FIML) procedures, attesting to the robustness of the findings despite issues with attrition and missingness.

2 We also explored analyzing the data using either 14 indicators, collapsing the items into 6 indicators, or collapsing the items into 3 indicators. Regardless of this, leisure consistently predicted episodic memory and executive function (ps < .02) and the indirect effects via sadness for both episodic memory and executive function remained significant (all 95% CIs did not include 0). As such, the results are robust regardless of the number of indicators used.

Additional information

Funding

The data that support the findings of this study are available in ICPSR at https://www.doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR04652.v7. These data were derived from the following resources available in the public domain: http://midus.wisc.edu/.