Mixed Emotions and Coping: The Benefits of Secondary Emotions

Anna Braniecka · Ewa Trzebińska · Aneta Dowgiert · Agata Wytykowska

77 citations0/0 files storedPLoS ONE

No readable copy stored yet — this record is metadata only.

No open-access location is known for this record yet.

Literature note Cite in a project Citation map

Resilience and Mental Health Psychological Well-being and Life Satisfaction Emotions and Moral Behavior

Abstract

The existing empirical literature suggests that during difficult situations, the concurrent experience of positive and negative affects may be ideal for ensuring successful adaptation and well-being. However, different patterns of mixed emotions may have different adaptive consequences. The present research tested the proposition that experiencing a pattern of secondary mixed emotion (i.e., secondary emotion that embrace both positive and negative affects) more greatly promotes adaptive coping than experiencing two other patterns of mixed emotional experiences: simultaneous (i.e., two emotions of opposing affects taking place at the same time) and sequential (i.e., two emotions of opposing affects switching back and forth). Support for this hypothesis was obtained from two experiments (Studies 1 and 2) and a longitudinal survey (Study 3). The results revealed that secondary mixed emotions predominate over sequential and simultaneous mixed emotional experiences in promoting adaptive coping through fostering the motivational and informative functions of emotions; this is done by providing solution-oriented actions rather than avoidance, faster decisions regarding coping strategies (Study 1), easier access to self-knowledge, and better narrative organization (Study 2). Furthermore, individuals characterized as being prone to feeling secondary mixed emotions were more resilient to stress caused by transitions than those who were characterized as being prone to feeling opposing emotions separately (Study 3). Taken together, the preliminary results indicate that the pattern of secondary mixed emotion provides individuals with a higher capacity to handle adversity than the other two patterns of mixed emotional experience.

Paper brief

Loading…

Cite this work

Citation unavailable for this work.

BibTeX RIS CSL-JSON

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Citations in this library

Citation map →

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 77 citations exist upstream.

References

1988Development and validation of brief measures of positive and negative affect: The PANAS scales.1988Development and validation of brief measures of positive and negative affect: The PANAS scales.1965Society and the Adolescent Self-Image 1970Manual for the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory 2001The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions.2001Ordinary magic: Resilience processes in development.2001Bad is Stronger than Good 1996Beck Depression Inventory–II

Explore the map →

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.

Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.