Parents' daily experience of childcare has garnered considerable attention following Kahneman et al.'s (2004) finding that childcare ranked among the least enjoyable daily activities. Subsequent studies have generally found that fathers report more positive valence during childcare compared to mothers. Here, we used experience sampling to examine daily experiences of first-time parents in Denmark between 2022 and 2024, where parental leave policies aim to promote involvement of fathers in infant care. Parents responded to 7 days of prompts during maternity and paternity leave, assessing valence (0-100 scale), sleepiness (Karolinska Sleepiness Scale), and current activities, including direct infant care, indirect care, and play (N = 227). Data were analyzed using Bayesian multilevel beta regression models. We found no credible evidence for the previously documented father advantage in valence during childcare. Mothers showed less positive valence during caregiving activities relative to other activities; effects for fathers were uncertain, and valence patterns differed across maternity and paternity leave. Sleepiness was strongly associated with less positive valence for both parents, with mothers showing steeper declines compared to fathers. Sleepiness moderated activity-valence associations in gender-specific ways: attenuating negative associations with direct care for mothers while reducing positive associations with play for fathers. In a country where paternal caregiving is supported through paid leave policies, mothers and fathers report largely similar valence patterns during infant care. The robust association between sleepiness and less positive valence points to sleep disruption as impacting parental emotion experiences, with mothers showing more vulnerability to its negative effects. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
Gratitude is not without its critics. Some have argued that it encourages complacency, thereby discouraging efforts to challenge the status quo. Although gratitude has been shown to promote prosocial behavior, most studies have focused on actions with relatively minor costs. Gratitude's impact on costly prosocial actions aimed at advancing the greater good remains underexplored. To address this gap, we analyzed data from a U.S. nationally representative sample (Study 1; N = 2,016), a longitudinal study of nationally representative samples across 22 countries (Study 2; N = 207,919), and a field study that surveyed individuals at blood drives and flu shot clinics (Study 3; N = 396). These studies yielded robust evidence that dispositionally grateful individuals are more likely to engage in costly prosocial actions. Two experiments that manipulated feelings of gratitude-one with a U.S. Prolific sample (Study 4a; N = 360) and one with a U.S. college student sample (Study 4b; N = 362)-did not result in a similar effect for state gratitude (although those who scored higher on trait gratitude in these experiments reported greater intentions to engage in costly prosocial actions). Together, our findings challenge claims that gratitude reinforces the status quo and undermines efforts to bring about societal change. Instead, we show that more grateful people are more likely to take on the hard, costly work of advancing the greater good. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
Awe is a transformative emotion, and in this research, we aimed to clarify how it influences people's values. Across five experiments (four preregistered; Ntotal = 1,679) conducted with U.K. community and student samples between 2023 and 2025, we tested whether awe reminded people of specific values, and whether this carried over to greater inspiration to pursue these values. We found that experiences of awe (vs. control) consistently reminded people more of universalism, stimulation, and humility values (Experiments 1a-3), using different awe induction methods and comparing awe with both neutral and positive emotion conditions (i.e., amusement). Salience of these values, in turn, mediated the effects of awe on inspiration to act according to these values (Experiments 2b-3). In addition, awe elicited by nature reminded people of somewhat different values than awe elicited by a social context (Experiments 2a-2b). These findings deepen our understanding of awe and the mechanisms behind the transformative effects of this emotion. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
Alexithymia, defined as difficulty identifying and describing one's own emotions, is associated with poor mental and physical health and low-quality social relationships. These consequences of alexithymia may arise from disrupted emotional communication, making it difficult for others to understand and reduce the distress of a person with alexithymia. In the present study, we examine how alexithymia affects affective and physiological responding to distress and emotional disclosure in newly acquainted female dyads (N = 140; 70 dyads). Between 2015 and 2017, one member of each dyad (the experiencer) was randomly assigned to undergo a stressful task and disclose negative personal experiences to their partner (the listener). Dyads viewed a video playback of their interactions while first continuously rating their own and then their partner's emotional valence to quantify how accurately partners rated each other's emotional valence. Results revealed that experiencers higher in alexithymia had greater sympathetic nervous system reactivity during the stressful task and emotional disclosure. Additionally, the emotional valence of individuals with alexithymia was rated less accurately by their partner. These findings suggest that the social challenges of alexithymia may stem from difficulties conveying emotions in ways that others can effectively interpret and support. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
Close relational partners play a critical role in shaping each other's emotions during social interactions, a process known as interpersonal emotion regulation. We examined how different forms of dementia (i.e., Alzheimer's disease, behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia, primary progressive aphasia) affect interpersonal emotion regulation. We assessed how caregivers perceived their partners' prosocial regulatory efforts and tracked real-time changes in caregivers' affect during a dyadic interaction. We also investigated how these processes relate to caregivers' mental health. Informal caregivers (N = 62) reported on their own mental health symptoms (depression, anxiety) and how their care recipients, who had different forms of dementia, use prosocial interpersonal emotion regulation (i.e., efforts to make their partner feel better). Dyads then engaged in a 10-min unrehearsed discussion about a conflict in their relationship. Following this, caregivers viewed a video recording of the interaction and used a rating dial to provide continuous ratings of their own affective valence (negative-neutral-positive) during the conversation. Results revealed that among care recipients with Alzheimer's disease, primary progressive aphasia, and behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia, those with behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia showed the lowest use of prosocial interpersonal emotion regulation, and their caregivers experienced the greatest increases in negative affect during the interaction. Across diagnoses, greater increases in caregiver negativity during the interaction were associated with greater caregiver depression (but not anxiety). These findings provide new information about interpersonal emotion regulation in dementia and highlight how the emotional changes that occur during dyadic interactions are tied to caregiver depressive symptoms. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
Rumination and dampening of positive emotions are consistently linked to poor mental health outcomes, yet the mechanisms underlying these repetitive thinking patterns remain underspecified. One candidate mechanism is negative interpretation inflexibility (persistence of negative interpretations of ambiguous situations over time). However, little is known about how these processes unfold in everyday life. Addressing this gap, the present study examined whether momentary negative interpretation inflexibility predicts subsequent rumination and dampening in daily life, and whether these repetitive thought patterns in turn predict the persistence of negative interpretations. A community sample of 179 adults with varying depression and social anxiety levels completed a 14-day ecological momentary assessment protocol (12,950 completed surveys). Ecological momentary assessment prompts included a novel mobile cognitive task (the Daily Life Interpretation Inflexibility Task) to assess the persistence of negative interpretations, alongside self-report measures of rumination and dampening. Preregistered multilevel analyses showed that within-person increases in negative interpretation inflexibility predicted subsequent increases in rumination and dampening. In the reverse direction, rumination, but not dampening, predicted subsequent increases in negative interpretation inflexibility. These temporal relations were not moderated by depression or social anxiety. Complementary dynamic structural equation models revealed significant reciprocal cross-lagged effects between negative interpretation inflexibility and rumination, and small reciprocal cross-lagged effects with dampening. These findings highlight negative interpretation inflexibility as a dynamic process that both precedes and follows repetitive thinking patterns in daily life. This work highlights negative interpretation persistence as a potential target for ecological interventions to reduce harmful repetitive thought. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
Hand-holding is a powerful form of social support that has been shown to alleviate physical pain. However, the effect of hand-holding on the ability to alleviate social pain has been less well explored. The current research examined whether holding a romantic partner's hand while revisiting socially painful memories could reduce the immediate experience of pain and whether this brief intervention provided long-term relief. Participants (n = 50) in long-term, monogamous relationships recalled socially painful memories while holding their partner's hand or a squeeze ball. Throughout the study, participants rated their level of pain. Although hand-holding did not reduce pain immediately, memories paired with hand-holding (vs. squeeze ball) were later recalled as significantly less painful 1 week later, relative to preintervention levels. Hand-holding does not decrease the immediate experience of social pain but may instead leverage adaptive memory updating of emotional experiences over time. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
Facial synchrony, the alignment of emotional expressions during interactions, is well researched, yet its role in emotion regulation remains unclear. Here, we investigated whether smile synchrony could serve as a pathway for emotional relief during real-life emotional sharing. Using automated facial expression analysis platform, we analyzed video recordings of 64 dyads (128 participants from multicultural backgrounds), in which one member (the target) shared an emotional event with their interaction partner. We predicted that smile synchrony would predict the targets' distress relief in the distressing condition (but not in a control nondistressing condition). The analysis of smile synchrony dynamics showed that while levels of smile synchrony were similar in the distressing and the nondistressing conditions, smile synchrony significantly predicted reduced sadness levels in targets only in the distressing condition. Moreover, leader-follower analysis revealed that the effect of smile synchrony on distress is evident both when the synchrony was initiated by the target and their interaction partner. Our results suggest a unique role for smiling synchrony during two-person distress regulation, highlighting its potential as a channel for alleviating sadness in emotionally charged interactions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
Emotion regulation is thought to play a crucial role in well-being. However, we know surprisingly little about how emotion regulation strategies predict well-being over time in adulthood. The present study analyzed data from a large-scale five-wave panel study spanning 8 years (2012-2020) on a nationally representative sample of Taiwanese adults (N = 4,990; Mage = 42.83). Using random intercept lagged panel modeling, we examined whether emotion regulation strategies measured at baseline (i.e., cognitive reappraisal and suppression of positive and of negative emotions) were (a) associated with the stable, trait-like between-person component of well-being (i.e., cognitive, affective, and physical) across the study period and (b) prospectively linked to later time-specific well-being above and beyond stable well-being and prior well-being. Reappraisal was positively associated with well-being at both the stable between-person level and the later time-specific level up to 8 years later. In contrast, suppression of positive (but not negative) emotions was negatively associated with well-being at both the stable between-person level and the later time-specific level. These associations generalized across all facets of well-being and also largely generalized across gender, age, and social class backgrounds. These findings suggest that how people regulate their emotions today is associated with their stable, trait-like well-being as well as long-term future well-being. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
Our affective experiences, including both positive and negative emotions and longer term affective states (LTASs) like moods, color everyday life. Emotional responses, momentary affective reactions arising from individual events and lasting from seconds to hours, can impact one's mood, diffuse affective states that lack a single causal event, and last much longer (e.g., days to weeks). However, the extent to which emotional responses and the events that elicited them impact mood on these longer timescales is unclear. Using a high-stakes, naturalistic paradigm, we tested whether exam grades, grade prediction errors, or the emotional reactions they elicit predict shifts in LTAS. For several semesters from 2019 through 2022, we assessed 821 college students' emotional responses to exam grades and, in the weeks surrounding exam grade feedback, assessed their LTASs. We demonstrate that emotional reactions to exam grades, grades themselves, and exam prediction errors all predict shifts in LTAS but that these effects decay across time. After completing model comparisons of several combinations of predictors, we found that the model best fit to predict LTASs includes immediate emotional response, grade, and exam prediction errors. Upon examining the model outputs, we found that emotional response and exam grade primarily predict changes in LTASs, suggesting that LTASs are not just an aggregate of time-attenuated emotions but can reflect other features like outcome value. However, there may be limits to the generalizability of the findings due to the diversity of the age, race, and gender diversity of the sample. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
Nostalgia, a sentimental longing for the past, is a resource for regulating psychological distress. According to socioemotional selectivity theory (Carstensen, 2006), aging is associated with a shift toward prioritizing emotionally meaningful goals. Integrating these views, we proposed that nostalgia's social affordances would make it a particularly potent resource for older adults when confronting interpersonal threats. We examined this hypothesis in two studies: an experience-sampling study and an experiment. In Study 1 (N = 115, age 18-80 years), older as compared to younger adults reported stronger nostalgic emotions following daily interpersonal negative emotions. In Study 2 (N = 189, age 21-78 years), older adults reported greater nostalgic engagement in response to social exclusion induced by the Cyberball game than younger adults. Furthermore, after experiencing nostalgia, compared to younger adults, older adults reported increased social engagement in everyday life (Study 1) and greater recovery of a sense of belonging from social exclusion (Study 2), demonstrating greater benefits from nostalgia. Importantly, these effects were unique to nostalgia and remained significant after controlling for general positive emotions. These findings suggest that nostalgia may be an adaptive resource for older adults. It is recruited specifically to counteract social threats and fulfills a need for emotional connectedness in later life, thereby functioning as a goal-congruent resource for healthy aging. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
Emotional states fluctuate continuously, yet it remains unclear how momentary emotional states and their temporal variability relate to cognition in daily life. We examined how fluctuations along the two principal dimensions of emotion, valence and arousal, are associated with objective cognitive performance and subjective mental effort using ecological momentary assessment. To address this question, we conducted two complementary studies. In Experiment 1 (online sample, n = 289), four brief state items (happiness, calmness, energy, fatigue) were validated as measures of state valence and arousal using a semantic association task and factor analysis. In Experiment 2, participants (July 2024-February 2025; n = 59) completed a 5-day ecological momentary assessment protocol with three assessments per day (682 completed sessions), combining repeated emotional state ratings with a working memory task and subjective mental effort reports. Associations were tested using linear mixed models. In Experiment 1, happiness and calmness loaded on a valence factor, whereas energy and fatigue loaded on an arousal factor. In Experiment 2, greater between-day variability in valence was associated with reduced working memory performance, driven by increased intrusion errors, together with lower perceived mental effort. In contrast, higher momentary arousal was associated with lower perceived mental effort without changes in working memory performance. Together, our results support a dissociation between emotional influences on cognitive control and on the subjective experience of effort. This dissociation suggests that emotion-cognition interactions in everyday life cannot be captured by a single affective dimension and that different emotional dimensions exert distinct effects on cognitive performance and its subjective experience. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
Neuroimaging work has repeatedly linked the visual sensory system to trauma flashbacks-vivid, spontaneous intrusions dominated by sensory-perceptual imagery-yet it remains unclear whether visual cortex plays a causal role or merely reflects downstream consequences of threat-circuit engagement. To test causality, we applied inhibitory (1 Hz) repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation to early visual cortex (V1/V2) following either conscious or subliminal reminder cueing of trauma-film memories. Relative to vertex stimulation, V1/V2 repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation reliably reduced the frequency, vividness, emotional distress, and daily impact of spontaneous intrusions over the following week in the conscious and unconscious cueing conditions. Explicit memory performance remained largely unaffected. Importantly, participants undergoing unconscious cueing also reported markedly reduced antipathy toward the intervention, suggesting greater emotional tolerability. These findings provide causal evidence for a contribution of visual cortex to trauma-memory intrusions and suggest a potentially low-distress intervention strategy that combines subliminal memory cueing with sensory cortical modulation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
The level at which people cognitively construe events and the valence of the affect they experience during the event are intertwined. Yet the literature on these relationships offers inconsistent findings. In this meta-analysis, we systematically examine how each of the two key variables from construal level theory-construal level and psychological distance-relates to affect valence. Analyzing effects from 78 articles (including 317 effect sizes from 58,270 observations), we show that, in line with our hypotheses, the pattern of effects for construal level is distinct from that for psychological distance, and context valence moderates the relationships between each construal level theory variable and affect valence. Overall, the findings demonstrate distinct patterns of relationships for construal level and psychological distance and suggest that their relationships with affect valence are moderated by the valence typically associated with the events experienced. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
Difficulties in emotion reactivity, awareness (alexithymia), and regulation are highly correlated and feature in a variety of psychological disorders. However, the nature of their connections remains largely unclear. In this study, we applied network analysis to build a network-based model of these three emotional constructs and examined their roles in psychological disorders (depression and anxiety) using data from 1,105 community adults. Participants have been recruited online in 2022. Both undirected networks and directed networks were constructed. The results indicated that difficulty inhibiting behaviors during positive emotions, difficulties downregulating negative feelings, and difficulties identifying positive feelings were highly influential nodes in undirected networks with and without depression and anxiety. Difficulty inhibiting behaviors during negative emotions was most strongly associated with depression and anxiety. The directed network further identified potential driving and outcome nodes among these constructs. These findings advance understanding of the interrelationship between related emotional constructs and their integration within emotional processing. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
Classic psychological theories propose that internal control beliefs, the perception that events are controllable, play a crucial role in fostering curiosity and exploratory behavior. However, previous studies have rarely manipulated control beliefs directly or examined the motivational mechanisms through which they promote curiosity. Across five experiments using a within-subject design (N = 207), we experimentally manipulated participants' internal control beliefs to test whether they promote curiosity about outcomes and to identify three motivational pathways through which curiosity may be fostered: anticipation of positive affect from outcomes (hedonic pathway), reduction of uncertainty (cognitive pathway), and instrumental utility (instrumental pathway). We found that internal control beliefs robustly enhanced curiosity (Experiments 1A, 1B, 2, 3, and 4). Moreover, this effect was mediated by increased anticipated positive affect (Experiment 2) and increased subjective instrumental utility (Experiment 4), supporting the hedonic and instrumental pathways. Although subjective uncertainty also showed an indirect effect in Experiment 3, this effect was not in the direction predicted by the cognitive value pathway. Together, these findings indicate that internal control beliefs enhance curiosity primarily through hedonic and instrumental pathways, with limited support for the cognitive pathway. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
Emotions arise not only from internal appraisals but also from the broader situational contexts in which those appraisals are made. Among these, perceived control is a well-established predictor of emotional well-being. However, its influence on affective responses may vary depending on contextual factors-an area that remains insufficiently explored. Across two preregistered experiments, we examine the moderating effects of acute stress and evaluative feedback on the relationship between perceived control and affective states. Study 1 (N = 321) employed an adapted Trier Social Stress Test to create high- and low-stress conditions and found perceived control to be associated with greater positive affect under low-stress and lower negative affect under high-stress conditions. Perceived control showed differential associations with affect across stress conditions, such that its affective benefits were contingent on contextual stress. Extending these findings, Study 2 (N = 322) utilized a similar high-stress condition to Study 1 and manipulated evaluative feedback in three conditions (i.e., positive, negative, and no-feedback conditions). Results indicated that negative feedback diminished the emotional benefits of perceived control on positive affect, while positive and no feedback allowed its protective influence on negative affect to persist. Together, these findings provide nuanced insights into how perceived control interacts with contextual factors to shape affective states. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
Interoception is the nervous system's integration of internal bodily signals, including gastrointestinal inputs. This process is crucial for regulating homeostasis, cognition, and emotion and depends on bidirectional brain-body communication. Given recent evidence of brain-stomach synchronization, determining whether emotional images (e.g., appetizing and disgusting) alter gastric activity is important for characterizing gut-brain interactions. Using an electrogastrogram (EGG), we recorded the gastric myoelectric activity (i.e., stomach's intrinsic rhythmicity) of 46 subjects (mostly undergraduate students, 37 females), while viewing three randomized blocks of appetizing, disgusting, or neutral images (70 per block, totaling 13 min), between 2024 and 2025. Participants then rated the appetite/disgust elicited by each image, completed a recall test, and answered psychological and interoception questionnaires. Linear mixed-effects models revealed significantly lower EGG power in the normogastric range (i.e., signal centered around 0.05 Hz) for disgusting compared to appetizing images. Additionally, a significantly higher proportion of normogastric power (i.e., normogastric activity) was found in the appetizing compared to the neutral condition. These differences were not accounted for by body mass index, hours since last meal, hunger level, interoception/psychological questionnaire measures, or recall performance. These findings provide evidence that gastric activity can be modulated in a top-down manner, possibly reflecting a preparatory physiological response. The reduced EGG power in the disgusting condition may be interpreted as preparation for rejection of food, whereas the increased normogastric activity in the appetizing condition may be interpreted as preparation for digestion. Our study provides a methodological foundation for assessing this manipulation's effect on gut-brain synchronization using simultaneous EGG and neural recordings. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
Anger constitutes a barrier to conflict resolution, often leading to escalation and hindering reconciliation. Accordingly, examining reconciliation through the lens of emotion regulation is crucial. Two prominent approaches to the study of reconciliation have focused either solely on emotion regulation or solely on need fulfillment. By integrating these theoretical frameworks, we extend existing conflict resolution approaches and suggest that need fulfillment functions as a form of implicit emotion regulation. In five preregistered experiments (total N = 1,877), we induced unfulfilled needs associated with anger across a workplace conflict scenario (Experiments 1-2 and 5), a close relationship conflict scenario (Experiment 3), and a real-time experience (Experiment 4). Fulfilling the need for status (Experiments 1-2 and 5) and justice (Experiments 3-5) decreased anger and increased willingness to reconcile with the offender. These effects emerged both when the need was fulfilled by the offender (Experiments 1-4) and by a third party (Experiment 5). We discuss the theoretical and practical implications, as well as the benefits and challenges of need fulfillment as a form of interpersonal emotion regulation for conflict resolution. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).
