Emotional responses to perceived haze in daily life: the moderation of dispositional mindfulness

ABSTRACT

Recent research suggests negative emotions result from haze. Yet there has been limited empirical work exploring the potential protective factors which positively influence emotional responses to perceived haze. Moreover, other research suggests dispositional mindfulness play an important role in reducing reactivity to threatening stimuli. The current study aimed to investigate the relation between perceived haze and negative emotions, and explored the moderation of dispositional mindfulness in this relation. Using Ambulatory Assessment (AA), 95 college students at the age of 21 monitored their perceived haze and negative emotions (e.g. depression, anxiety, anger) twice a day over 2 weeks. Dispositional mindfulness was assessed by Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS). Results showed that people who perceived more serious haze would have more negative emotions. Furthermore, dispositional mindfulness significantly moderated this association. The current study revealed that individuals with higher dispositional mindfulness may feel less depressed to haze, compared with individuals with lower dispositional mindfulness.

KEYWORDS:

• Perceived haze
• negative emotions
• ambulatory assessment
• dispositional mindfulness
• moderating effect

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by The Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province, China [BK20171036].