Journal article
The Thrill of Victory: Savoring Positive Affect, Psychophysiological Reward Processing, and Symptoms of Depression
Emotion (Washington, D.C.), Vol.22(6), pp.1281-1293
09/01/2022
DOI: 10.1037/emo0000914
PMCID: 8343962
PMID: 33252936
Abstract
Depression is characterized by a pattern of maladaptive emotion regulation. Recently, researchers have begun to focus on associations between depression and two positive affect regulation strategies: savoring and dampening. Savoring, or upregulation of positive affect, is positively associated with well-being and negatively associated with depression, whereas dampening, or downregulation of positive affect, is positively associated with depression, anhedonia, and negative affect. To date, no research has examined whether savoring or dampening can affect neurophysiological reactivity to reward, which previous research has shown is associated with symptoms of depression. Here, we examined associations between psychophysiological reward processing-primarily captured by the Reward Positivity (RewP), an event-related potential (ERP) deflection elicited by feedback indicating reward (vs. nonreward)-positive affect regulation strategies, and symptoms of depression. One hundred undergraduates completed questionnaires assessing affect, emotion regulation, and depressive symptoms and completed a computerized guessing task, once before and again after being randomly assigned to emotion-regulation strategy conditions. Results indicate that (a) the relationship between RewP amplitude and depressive symptoms may, in part, depend upon positive affect regulation strategies and (b) the RewP elicited by reward appears sensitive to a savoring intervention. These findings suggest that mitigating depressive symptoms in emerging adults may depend on both top-down (i.e., savoring) and bottom-up (i.e., RewP) forms of positive affect regulation and have important implications for clinical prevention and intervention efforts for depressive symptoms and disorder.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- The Thrill of Victory: Savoring Positive Affect, Psychophysiological Reward Processing, and Symptoms of Depression
- Creators
- Kelsey M. Irvin - University of MissouriDebora J. Bell - University of MissouriDoug Steinley - University of MissouriBruce D. Bartholow - University of Missouri
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Emotion (Washington, D.C.), Vol.22(6), pp.1281-1293
- DOI
- 10.1037/emo0000914
- PMID
- 33252936
- PMCID
- 8343962
- NLM abbreviation
- Emotion
- ISSN
- 1528-3542
- eISSN
- 1931-1516
- Publisher
- Amer Psychological Assoc
- Number of pages
- 13
- Grant note
- R01AA025451 / University of Missouri, Columbia Life Sciences Fellowship National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism; United States Department of Health & Human Services; National Institutes of Health (NIH) - USA; NIH National Institute on Alcohol Abuse & Alcoholism (NIAAA)
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 09/01/2022
- Academic Unit
- Psychological and Brain Sciences; Iowa Neuroscience Institute
- Record Identifier
- 9984446412702771
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