An integrative analysis of potential mechanisms of reduced positive affect in daily life in depression: an ESM study

ABSTRACT

Decreased levels of positive affect (PA) are a hallmark of depression. Current models propose as potential main mechanisms a dysfunctional use of emotion regulation (ER) strategies (i.e. dampening, positive rumination), and a maladaptive activation of pro-hedonic goals. However, the role of these mechanisms in PA in daily life remains understudied. We used a 10-day ESM design to assess how these mechanisms influence each other and contribute to depressive symptomatology-related low momentary PA in 139 individuals. Higher depressive symptoms were associated with lower PA, pro-hedonic goals, more frequent use of positive rumination, and higher use of dampening. Further, experiencing higher levels of PA predicted lower following time point use of dampening in individuals with higher symptoms. Finally, using positive rumination was more beneficial (i.e. predicted higher PA increases one moment later) for individuals with higher symptomatology. Our findings suggest that moment-to-moment changes in PA daily life are affected by, and have an effect on, both pro-hedonic goals and the use of dampening and positive rumination, highlighting specific cognitive–affective mechanisms that should be considered when designing interventions aimed at improving low PA characterising depression symptomatology.

KEYWORDS:

• Positive affect
• positive emotional reactivity
• emotion regulation
• pro-hedonic goals
• depression symptomatology

Declarations

Credit authorship contribution statement

APR, ASL, and CV developed the study concept. OMG, ASL, and APR, contributed to the design of the study. OMG recruited the participants and programmed the questionnaires using an online app developed by IB. Data collection was performed by OMG, TB and APR. Data cleaning was performed by OMG. Main analyses were conducted by RRS and APR under the supervision of ASL. APR drafted the paper under the supervision of CV and ASL. All authors revised and improved the final manuscript.

Disclosure statement

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

Data availability, appendices. Supplementary data

All can be found at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/QX4BG

Pre-registration: The overall project was registered at OSF https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/DSQAG

Notes

1 “Originally, pro-hedonic goals were defined to be assessed with two items. Participants were asked to report the extent to which they had focused on “achieving positive results on things important to you” (item 1) and “finding ways of having fun or feeling good” (item 2) since they completed the previous survey. However, following statistical analyses on the within-subjects correlation among both items, it was shown that they could not be studied conjunctively (r_i scores ranged from −0.63 to 0.99, with an average of 0.40). Consequently, the first item was dropped as it did not solely capture the measure of pro-hedonic goals intended to be tested. Analyses in the present paper were thus conducted with only one item. Analyses with both items and an explanation of these further results can be found in the supplemental material. Overall, analyses showed that including a promotion component (i.e., item 1) in the analyses results in a moderating effect of depression symptoms on the association between pro-hedonic goals and dampening, such that individuals with more depressive symptoms used significantly less dampening when being more but not less pro-hedonically motivated.”

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science. Grant PID2021-127480NB-I00.