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What about the “ups and downs” in our daily life? The influence of affective instability on mental health

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Abstract

Although affective instability is considered to be a crucial factor for mental disorders, research on affective instability and mental health is still rare. The aim of the present study was to investigate affective instability and mental health operationalized by the degree of psychological distress and life satisfaction. Using ecological momentary assessment, we investigated affective intensity and instability in a general population sample (n = 218). Psychological distress and life satisfaction were examined cross-sectionally and longitudinally. In general, we found that positive affect was more variable than negative affect. When we accounted for the overlap between variables, our findings demonstrated that besides the effects of intensity in negative affect and positive affect, higher positive affective instability was related to better concurrent mental health. Longitudinally, negative affective intensity was a decisive factor in the development of mental health. In sum, our findings revealed that affective instability was not dysfunctional per se. In fact, instability in positive affect seems to be important to achieve mental health.

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Notes

  1. We also examined between-day instability by averaging the daily assessments of affectivity and computing successive differences between daily mean NA and PA on every other day. Here, our findings indicated that within-day and between-day instability were moderately to highly correlated (r = 0.26–0.61). As we were especially interested in affective instability as rapid changes from one moment to the next (see also DSM-5), we only included within-day affective instability in our analysis.

  2. To account for the non-independence of our data, we recomputed all analysis including only the oldest child per family (n = 180 for T2 and n = 117 for T3). All in all, the main findings remained stable. NA intensity was the only significant predictor in the model predicting psychological distress at T2 and T3. Also in this case, instability in NA (whether assessed with the MSSD or the PAC) was not significant. Moreover, lower NA intensity, higher PA intensity and higher PA instability were associated with higher life satisfaction at T2 and T3. Additionally, the interaction between PA intensity and instability reached significance in the model predicting life-satisfaction cross-sectionally (regression model using the MSSD: β = 0.16, p < 0.05; regression model using the PAC: β = 0.15, p < 0.05). However, NA intensity was no longer a significant predictor for changes in psychological distress from T2 to T3 (regression model using the MSSD: β = −0.17, p = 0.12; regression model using the PAC: β = −0.10, p = 0.43).

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Acknowledgments

The data used in the current study is based on the assessments at T2 and T3 of the Greifswald Family Study, which was funded by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, BA 2172/8-1 | GR 1912/7-1). We thank Katja Appel for her research assistance as well as Elisabeth Arens and Eva Reinelt for their very helpful comments. Due to the longitudinal design of the study, this article is partly based on data also used in a previously published report (Aldinger et al. 2014).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, Institute of Psychology, University of Heidelberg, Hauptstrasse 47-51, 69117, Heidelberg, Germany

    Gabriela Spindler, Malte Stopsack, Maren Aldinger & Sven Barnow

  2. Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Medicine Greifswald and HELIOS Hospital Stralsund, Stralsund, Germany

    Hans Jörgen Grabe

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  1. Gabriela Spindler
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Correspondence to Gabriela Spindler.

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Spindler, G., Stopsack, M., Aldinger, M. et al. What about the “ups and downs” in our daily life? The influence of affective instability on mental health. Motiv Emot 40, 148–161 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-015-9509-7

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