Complex affect dynamics add limited information to the prediction of psychological well being
Over the years, many studies have demonstrated a relation between emotion dynamics and psychological well being1. Because our emotional life is inherently time dynamic2 6, affective scientists argue that, next to how positive or negative we feel on average, patterns of emotional change are informative for mental health7 10. This growing interest initiated a surge in new affect dynamic measures, each claiming to capture a unique dynamical aspect of our emotional life, crucial for understanding well being. Although this accumulation suggests scientific progress, researchers have not always evaluated (a) how different affect dynamic measures empirically interrelate and (b) what their added value is in the prediction of psychological well being. Here, we address these questions by analysing affective time series data from 15 studies (n 1,777) We show that (a) considerable interdependencies between measures exist, suggesting that single dynamics often do not convey unique information, and (b) dynamic measures have little added value over mean levels of positive and negative affect (and variance in these affective states) when predicting individual differences in three indicators of well being (life satisfaction, depressive symptoms and borderline symptoms) Our findings indicate that conventional emotion research is currently unable to demonstrate independent relations between affect dynamics and psychological well being.Research into emotion dynamics and well being has, over the years, used an increasing number of dynamic measures to capture emotional change. Dejonckheere et al. show that these measures add little to the information conveyed by mean affect and its variance.
Nature Human Behaviour