Talking about daily emotional events: Psychological well-being moderates the intensity–disclosure link

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2015.04.027Get rights and content

Highlights

  • We examined the relation between the intensity and disclosure of unpleasant events.

  • Within-person and between-person perspectives were examined.

  • Emotional disclosure tendencies moderated the relation.

  • Well-being explained the moderating effect of symptoms of depression.

Abstract

The intensity of distressing events predicts people’s disclosure of those events at between-person and within-person levels. Depression symptoms seem to attenuate the within-person relation, but past research has not taken a multidimensional view of depression as a moderator. The authors tested whether two constructs related to depression-general psychological well-being and life satisfaction-account for depression’s moderating effects. In a daily diary study, college students (N = 116) rated the intensity of the day’s most unpleasant event and their disclosure of the event each day for 14 days. Participants completed measures of disclosure tendencies, depression symptoms, well-being, and life satisfaction prior to the diary portion of the study. Multilevel modeling analyses revealed moderating effects of disclosure tendencies and depression on the within-person intensity–disclosure relation. However, when psychological well-being and life satisfaction were entered, depression was no longer a significant moderator, but well-being was. Psychological well-being therefore determines the expression of individual differences in the disclosure of daily emotional events.

Introduction

In Western cultures, when people experience negative emotions, they talk about them (Rimé, 2007). This association has been observed in naturalistic and experimental studies with respect to emotions stemming from distressing events (Kahn & Garrison, 2009), chronic pain (Cano, Leong, Williams, May, & Lutz, 2012), and emotionally intense film clips (Luminet, Bouts, Delie, Manstead, & Rimé, 2000). Yet individuals vary in their tendency to disclose distressing emotions, a trait termed distress disclosure (see Kahn, Hucke, Bradley, Glinski, & Malak, 2012). Distress disclosure is conceptually distinct from self-concealment and emotional expressivity; it is positively related to self-esteem, life satisfaction, and positive affect; and it is negatively related to depression and negative affect (Kahn et al., 2012). Thus, emotional disclosure has implications for well-being.

Most of the research on emotional disclosure has examined between-person differences in disclosure. Whereas the between-person question addresses whether individuals differ from one another in their disclosure behavior, the within-person question addresses whether a given person is more likely to talk about an intense emotional event than a low-intensity event. Theories such as Rimé’s (1995) theory of social sharing and Stiles’s (1995) fever model would suggest the answer is yes, and empirical studies also support this idea. Garrison and Kahn (2010) had participants identify the most unpleasant event of their day, rate the intensity of their reaction to the event, and rate the degree to which they disclosed the event each day for 7 days. Multilevel modeling indicated a positive within-person relation between intensity and disclosure such that 43% of the within-person variance in disclosure was explained by the intensity of the event. This finding was replicated in a study using the same diary methodology (Garrison, Kahn, Sauer, & Florczak, 2012). Thus, not only does the intensity–disclosure link exist at the between-person level, but it exists within-person as well.

As mentioned, not everyone discloses when distress is experienced. For example, individuals higher in distress disclosure (the trait) show greater concordance (i.e., a stronger within-person intensity–disclosure slope) between the intensity of daily events and their disclosure of those events (Garrison & Kahn, 2010). Another empirically supported moderator of the intensity–disclosure slope is symptoms of depression. Depression is a global problem (Ferrari et al., 2013), and even mild levels of depression command attention from practitioners (Mitchell, Rao, & Vaze, 2010). A key characteristic of depression is emotion dysregulation at several points along the emotion-generation process (see Campbell-Sills & Barlow, 2007). This includes maladaptive situation selection (e.g., situational avoidance), attentional deployment (e.g., distraction), and response modulation (e.g., expressive suppression). Consistent with this theme of emotional avoidance, Garrison and Kahn (2010) found that the relation between the intensity and disclosure of daily emotional events was weaker for individuals high in depressive symptoms than for low-symptom individuals, even while controlling for distress disclosure and gender. Garrison et al. (2012) replicated this finding while also controlling for adult attachment. This is notable because individuals experiencing depressive symptoms experience greater distress, yet they talk about their intense distress less.

The emotion-dysregulation theory of depression is a compelling explanation for this moderation effect, yet this theory cannot completely explain it. The emotion dysregulation model applies to the experiences of clinically depressed people, yet Garrison and colleagues (e.g., Garrison et al., 2012) found moderation for depression symptoms among general samples of college students. In other words, subclinical levels of depression were enough to attenuate the intensity–disclosure relation. We speculate that depression per se does not lead to diminished disclosure, but a generalized sense of unhappiness (e.g., poor well-being, dissatisfaction with life) does. Such a view is consistent with Rottenberg’s (2007) emotion context insensitivity hypothesis which suggests that the frequent negative moods experienced by people with depression lead them to become desensitized to distress; thus, they would not disclose events that are even highly intense. Although Rottenberg was also describing the experiences of clinically depressed people, it may not be clinical depression as a latent entity that leads people to keep highly emotional events private; rather, heightened levels of depressed mood may be enough to moderate the intensity–disclosure relation. If so, a measure of general psychological well-being might exert a similar moderating effect on the within-person intensity–disclosure relation, and it might correspondingly diminish the moderating effect of depression symptoms. Life satisfaction, which is a component of subjective well-being and happiness, might also eliminate the moderation effect of depression symptoms.

Our purpose was to examine whether psychological well-being explains depression’s moderating effect on the within-person intensity–disclosure association. We conducted a 14-day diary study. Participants first completed measures of distress disclosure, depression symptoms, well-being, and life satisfaction. Then, in response to each day’s most unpleasant emotional event, they completed measures of the event’s intensity and how much they disclosed the event. We hypothesized that higher levels of distress disclosure and lower levels of depression symptoms would strengthen the intensity–disclosure relations. However, when controlling for well-being and life satisfaction, we hypothesized that depression would no longer function as a moderator.

Section snippets

Participants

U.S. college students were recruited through research sign-up boards between September and November. Although 157 participants began the study, 41 were eliminated from the sample because they did not provide sufficient daily data (see Section 3 for more detail). The final sample was therefore 116 participants (101 women, 15 men), of whom 88 were European American, 11 were African American, 9 were Latino/Latina, 5 were biracial/multiracial, 1 was Asian American, and 2 who did not report their

Statistical power

Of the 1215 daily questionnaires submitted, 167 were unusable because either no unpleasant event was reported or they were not submitted on time. Given that our hypotheses involved within-person slopes, we opted to analyze only data from participants who had at least 4 usable daily questionnaires, resulting in the listwise deletion of 41 participants and another 60 daily questionnaires. There were no significant differences in gender or other measures (i.e., DDI, SWLS, and IDAS) between the

Discussion

This research examined emotional disclosure both as a trait (between-person) and a personality process (within-person). At the trait level, distress disclosure was associated with less depression, greater well-being, and higher life satisfaction. These findings, which replicate past research (Kahn et al., 2012), establish distress disclosure as a key correlate of psychological health. Distress disclosure also predicted the disclosure of daily unpleasant events, thus establishing trait-behavior

Conclusions

Our research suggests that emotional disclosure is an interactive function of the emotional event and the person. Measuring the disclosure of one specific event or issue, as is common in between-person research (e.g., Kahn & Garrison, 2009), overlooks how a given individual varies his or her disclosure behavior across time and situations. We therefore recommend a within-person process perspective in emotional-disclosure research (see Cervone, 2005).

Moreover, to some, the role of depression

References (25)

  • A. Cano et al.

    Correlates and consequences of the disclosure of pain-related distress to one’s spouse

    Pain

    (2012)
  • L. Campbell-Sills et al.

    Incorporating emotion regulation into conceptualizations and treatments of anxiety and mood disorders

  • D. Cervone

    Personality architecture: Within-person structures and processes

    Annual Review of Psychology

    (2005)
  • G.-M. Chen

    Differences in self-disclosure patterns among Americans versus Chinese: A comparative study

    Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology

    (1995)
  • E. Deiner et al.

    The satisfaction with life scale

    Journal of Personality Assessment

    (1985)
  • A.J. Ferrari et al.

    Burden of depressive disorders by country, sex, age, and year: Findings from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2010

    PLoS: Medicine

    (2013)
  • A.M. Garrison et al.

    Intraindividual relations between the intensity of disclosure of daily events: The moderating role of depressive symptoms

    Journal of Counseling Psychology

    (2010)
  • A.M. Garrison et al.

    Disentangling the effects of depression symptoms and adult attachment on emotional disclosure

    Journal of Counseling Psychology

    (2012)
  • J.H. Kahn et al.

    Emotional self-disclosure and emotional avoidance: Relations with symptoms of depression and anxiety

    Journal of Counseling Psychology

    (2009)
  • J.H. Kahn et al.

    Measuring the tendency to conceal versus disclose psychological distress

    Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology

    (2001)
  • J.H. Kahn et al.

    The Distress Disclosure Index: A research review and multitrait-multimethod examination

    Journal of Counseling Psychology

    (2012)
  • E. Kennedy-Moore et al.

    How and when does emotional expression help?

    Review of General Psychology

    (2001)
  • Cited by (0)

    This research was based on a master’s thesis conducted by Mary Beth Ryan under the direction of Jeffrey H. Kahn. The authors wish to thank Ashley Beckett and Hania Jakszuk for their assistance with data collection. We also thank Margaret Nauta and Renée Tobin for their thoughtful ideas about this research.

    View full text