The role of discrete emotions in health outcomes: A critical review (original) (raw)
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Applied and Preventive Psychology, 2007
Global aspects of emotion have been central to psychosocial theories of health and health behavior for several decades. A growing body of research has documented key roles for several broad affective constructs – notably anxiety, depression, and anger/hostility – in areas ranging from basic physiological processes, health behaviors, and symptom reporting, to screening and detection behaviors and decision making. Despite this growth, however, the emotions-health literature remains scattered. Mechanisms are poorly understood and several key emotions – embarrassment, disgust, guilt and hope – have scarcely been examined. In presenting the advantages of a discrete emotions perspective, the current report reviews and critiques data describing the relations between discrete emotions and health. It presents a developmental-evolutionary framework within which to more systematically consider the links between emotions and health. It is suggested that discrete emotions perspectives provide guidance for understanding the physiological, motivational, and cognitive pathways linking emotions and health and thus their impact on health outcomes.
The study of emotions and health has had a long history. To begin with, research was concerned with the influence of physiological reactions (later termed ���stress���) to outside aversive events (Selye, 1951). Subsequent research examined the influence of experienced negative emotions on the body's ability to fight infections (Cohen & Wills, 1985). More recently, Leventhal and Patrick-Miller (2000) have argued that emotions can be causes of health states as well as outcomes, and can even be indicators of health.
Emotion and Health: An overview
2010
SIS J. Proj. Psy. & Ment. Health (2010) 17 : 135-152 The relationship emotion and health has been a focus of scientific inquiry in psychology for a long time but it occupied pivotal position with the advent of Alexander’s psychosomatic paradigm. Since then, a number of affect related constructs have been explicated with potential implications for health. The present paper makes an attempt to review the role of some affect related constructs in health that have been centre of attention in the contemporary psychological researches. We have reviewed empirical evidences that demonstrate the relationship of such affect related constructs, as emotion regulation, emotional disclosure, emotional intelligence, alexithymia, positive/negative affect, and affect intensity with health. In general, the review suggests that some affect related constructs such as cognitive regulations of emotion, emotional disclosure, positive emotional experiences and most of the dimensions of emotional intelligen...
Comment: The Emotion–Health Link: Perspectives From a Lifespan Theory of Discrete Emotions
Emotion Review, 2018
Suls provides a useful review of research interested in the contribution of chronic negative emotions to coronary heart disease (CHD). Despite widespread support for a link between negative emotions and the etiology of disease, it is largely unknown if discrete negative emotions, particularly anger, sadness, and anxiety contribute to the development of physical disease in different ways. In this comment, we argue that answering this question will require a more comprehensive analysis of the unique characteristics of discrete emotions as well as conceptually refined assumptions about how discrete emotions develop and change across the adult lifespan.
Psychosomatic Medicine, 2019
Emotional characteristics and processes are robust predictors of the development and course of major medical illnesses and premature mortality, as are a variety of indicators of the presence and quality of personal relationships. Despite clear evidence of close interconnection between these two domains of risk and protection, affective characteristics and relationships have largely been studied separately as influences on health. After a recent conference on integrative perspectives on emotions, relationships and health co-sponsored by the American Psychosomatic Society and the Society for Affective Science, the present review builds on prior calls for integration, related theory, and current research to outline what is known about the interconnection of these domains as it specifically relates to their overlapping influences on health. Areas of interest include the following: their interconnected roles over the course of development, which may inform current efforts to understand the influence of early life events on adult health; the parallel positive and negative factors in both domains that could have distinct influences on health; the role of emotion regulation in relationship contexts; and measurement, design, and analysis approaches to capture the dyadic and dynamic aspects of these interconnected influences on health. We conclude with a discussion of an emerging research agenda that includes the following: common biological foundations of affective and relationship processes, the cultural embeddedness of affective and relationship processes, the potential contribution of affective-relational processes to health disparities, and implications for intervention research.
Background: The aim of this study was to examine whether exposure to human suffering is associated with negative changes in perceptions about personal health. We further examined the relation of possible health perception changes, to changes in five discrete emotions (i.e., fear, guilt, hostility/anger, and joviality), as a guide to understand the processes underlying health perception changes, provided that each emotion conveys information regarding triggering conditions. Methodology/Findings: An experimental group (N = 47) was exposed to images of human affliction, whereas a control group (N = 47) was exposed to relaxing images. Participants in the experimental group reported more health anxiety and health value, as well as lower health-related optimism and internal health locus of control, in comparison to participants exposed to relaxing images. They also reported more fear, guilt, hostility and sadness, as well as less joviality. Changes in each health perception were related to changes in particular emotions.
Relationship between emotion and health: a two-way street
Brazilian Journal of Development
Emotional reactions impact on people's health and quality of life. With the advent of neuroscience in the 1990s, much research has focused on the relationship between neural circuits and emotional reactions. In this sense, we have identified a 2031% growth in research linking emotions and health between 1990 and 2022. Using the Text mining tool called "Biotext Tools", we performed a literature search, focusing on diseases of old age and covid-19. Emotion molecules (EMs), produced by the endocrine system, impact the homeostasis of the body, affecting the biological balance of the body. We related the EMs with diseases of the elderly and Covid-19, in order to analyze the impact of emotional states on the development and treatment of these pathologies. To this end, the bidirectional relationship between anxiety, depression, heart disease, stroke, and Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases was analyzed. Finally, Coronavirus severity and mortality levels were related ...
Emotion and biological health: the socio-cultural moderation
Current Opinion in Psychology, 2017
Prior evidence shows that positive and negative emotions are associated with better and worse health, respectively. However, the emotion-health relationship may be conflated since this evidence is based nearly exclusively on subjective measures of health. Here, we reviewed more recent evidence focusing on biological health and showed that the emotion-health link is more complex. First, whereas negative emotional states such as negative affect and anger expression are inversely linked to biological health among Americans, this relationship is either not present (negative affect) or even reversed (anger expression) for Japanese. Second, whereas a meaningfulness aspect of happiness (eudaimonia) is linked consistently to better biological health, the relationship between its pleasantness aspect (hedonia) and biological health is uncertain. Moreover, a contextualized sense of meaningfulness in a work setting is strongly associated with better biological health among Japanese. Altogether, the initial evidence reviewed here underscores a need to conceptualize the biological dynamics of health and wellbeing as inherently intertwined with socio-cultural processes. Is emotion linked to health? The answer to this question would appear straightforward. Whereas positive emotions are good for health, negative emotions are bad for it [1-3]. In their review of relevant empirical evidence, Cohen and Pressman [1] observed that negative emotions including anxiety, depression, and hostility predict increased risk for illness and mortality and further noted that there also likely exists a reliable association between trait positive affect and better health as indexed by lower morbidity and decreased symptoms and pain. Nevertheless, there is an important qualification to this apparently straightforward conclusion. As Cohen and Pressman noted in the same review, the evidence is 'more complex (page 122)' when more objective measures of health, most notably mortality, are used. In the current paper, we will go a step further and suggest that when objective indicators of health are utilized, the link between emotion and health could be systematically moderated by certain social contextual factors including global cultural context and more local work context.