Articlegreen2011

Don't hide your happiness! Positive emotion dissociation, social connectedness, and psychological functioning.

Iris B. Mauss · Amanda J. Shallcross · Allison S. Troy · Oliver P. John · Emilio E. Ferrer · Frank H. Wilhelm +1 more

188 citations0/0 files storedJournal of Personality and Social Psychology

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

Psychological Well-being and Life Satisfaction Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes Mental Health Research Topics

Abstract

It is now clear that positive emotion leads to enhanced psychological functioning. What is less clear, however, is just why this is so. Drawing on a social-functional perspective, we argue that positive emotional behavior that accurately signals to others the individual's internal state will enhance social connectedness. Positive emotional behavior that does not accurately signal a person's experience--such as a smile that is not felt--may impede social connectedness and, in turn, psychological functioning. This perspective suggests that (a) the degree to which experience and behavior are dissociated during positive emotional episodes, over and above level of positive behavior, should predict worse psychological functioning and (b) the effect of dissociation should be mediated by social connectedness. To test these hypotheses, we conducted a short-term prospective longitudinal study, with a baseline assessment of depressive symptoms and well-being at Time 1. Six months later, at Time 2, we used a novel within-individual laboratory paradigm to measure the degree to which positive emotional behavior was dissociated from (vs. coherent with) a participant's positive emotional experience. We also assessed level of positive behavior and experience. Then, another 6 months later, we assessed social connectedness as a mediator and depressive symptoms and well-being as outcomes at Time 3. Even when controlling for baseline functioning and for level of positive emotion behavior and experience, we found that greater positive experience-behavior dissociation at Time 2 predicted higher levels of depressive symptoms and lower levels of well-being at Time 3. As predicted, these associations were mediated by social connectedness.

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 — 188 citations exist upstream.

References

1977The CES-D Scale 1985The Satisfaction With Life Scale 2001The role of positive emotions in positive psychology: The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions.1872The expression of the emotions in man and animals.2003Individual differences in two emotion regulation processes: Implications for affect, relationships, and well-being.1992An argument for basic emotions 2013Handbook of Social Psychology 1999Well-being : the foundations of hedonic psychology

Cited by

2021Digital well-being theory and research 2015Emotional Labor Dynamics: A Momentary Approach 2017How Social Are Social Media? A Review of Online Social Behaviour and Connectedness 2018How Psychological Capital Mediates Between Study–Related Positive Emotions and Academic Performance 2014Emotional disclosure on social networking sites: The role of network structure and psychological needs 2015PROSPER: A New Framework for Positive Education

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.