Metamood

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Meta-mood is a term used by psychologists to refer to an individual's awareness of their emotions. [1] The term was first utilized by John D. Mayer and Peter Salovey who believed the experience of mood involved "direct" and "indirect" components. [2] While the direct level refers to the simple appearance of mood - happiness, fear, anger, sadness, and surprise (often referred to as the six basic emotions, introduced by Paul Ekman), [3] the indirect level, or the meta-mood experience, does not solely consist of the emotions experienced by an individual in the moment. Rather, it is a reflective state which involves additional thoughts and feelings about the mood itself. [2] "I shouldn’t feel this way" or "I am thinking of ways to improve my mood" are examples of reflective thoughts during a meta-mood experience. [4]

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Meta-mood is also a facet of emotional intelligence. Alexithymia, or the inability to identify and describe one's own or others' emotions, is generally viewed as antagonistic to meta-mood, as individuals who have symptoms of alexithymia often have trouble describing and analyzing their emotions. People who are unreflective and emotionally stable have fewer meta-mood experiences and commonly do not need them. [3] On the other hand, individuals who are generally self-aware and have high emotionality have highly developed meta-mood experiences. Studies have shown that individuals who are able to improve negative moods through meta-emotions are seen to possess healthier personalities than individuals who are not able to have such experiences. [3]

Individual meta-mood experiences

Variance in meta-mood reflective states among individuals helps determine the different mechanisms individuals utilize to recognize, monitor, and regulate their feelings and emotions. The means by which individuals recognize their current mood, distinguish between different feelings, and adjust their emotions is crucial for the understanding of adaptive strategies they use to cope with interpersonal conflict and stress in their life. [2]

The measurement of trait meta-mood involves three main components: attention to feelings (the individual awareness of one's mood), clarity of feelings (the individual ability to distinguish between moods), and mood repair (the ability to regulate mood from a negative to positive state). [5] Of all three components, mood repair is most important in achieving a healthy emotional mindset. Mood regulation takes place on both conscious and unconscious levels. [4] Mayer et al. contends that "a negative mood that is evaluated as out of control, unacceptable, and long-lasting is devastating; but were the evaluations reversed so as to view the mood as under control and soon to change, the overall feeling would be far less destructive to one’s equanimity". [3] Self-control and self-regulation are crucial components of emotional intelligence and are associated with positive cognitive responses to social interactions. [6]

Coping strategies individuals use are central determinants of overall psychological well-being and mental health. [7] Previous research has shown that meta-mood is linked to lower levels of depression and anxiety, and higher levels self-esteem. The perceived ability to distinguish and repair distressing moods or preserve positive moods predicts superior overall well-being. Emotional repair is also found to have direct links to the maintenance of subjective happiness. [8] Meta-mood experiences, such as mood clarity and emotional repair, are high predictors of life satisfaction. Individuals who are prone to being open about their emotions and who recognize their negative and positive responses towards a variety of environmental stressors have a greater probability of experiencing higher levels of life satisfaction than individuals who withhold their emotions. [2] Individuals who are aware of their emotional states and are able to regulate their cognitive and emotional responses, are able to turn their attention towards coping strategies in difficult situations and minimize the psychological impact of stressful events. Ultimately, individuals prone to meta-mood experiences are able to acknowledge and respond to external environmental demands more easily and recover from troubled situations at a quicker pace. [2] However, individuals low on emotional intelligence often exhibit avoidance-oriented and emotion-oriented coping styles. [6] In addition, individuals who are not able to regulate and repair negative mood states have higher reports of illness. [5]

Implications for psychotherapy

Comprehending and measuring the degree to which individuals are able to respond to and understand their emotions is an important precondition if one were to predict future behaviors, emotional disorders, and psychological maladjustments. [2] Meta-mood experiences have possible implications for a variety of treatments and preventative measures within the field of clinical psychology and psychotherapy. Mood repair is key in tackling the harmful effects of anxiety, depression, and other psychological conditions. As such, a variety of studies concerning meta-mood experiences have accentuated the importance of positive psychology and stress management programs for assisting individuals in coping with distressing situations in daily life. [8] In their study, Lourdes Rey et al. have argued that "it seems reasonable to assume that individuals might be able to be trained to acquire mood repair abilities, given the high similarity between mood repair and other traditional techniques like positive refocusing or learned optimism styles". [8] Training individuals to be aware of their emotions, to be able to differentiate among different feelings, and consequently change their mood, is useful in psychotherapy because patients with meta-mood experiences are better equipped to handle difficult situations. Studies have shown that mindfulness intervention in colleges increases meta-mood experiences of students, and therefore leads to an improvement in student well-being. [7] Mindfulness meditation consists of attentional training and focuses on developing insight into one's emotional experience. [7] In addition, when patients believe that their mood and meta-mood experiences are understood, they are more willing to open up about their character, their fears, and their core beliefs.

Trait meta-mood scale

The Trait Meta-Mood Scale (TMMS) is used to measure emotional beliefs and attitudes people have towards their own emotional experiences. [9] The TMMS scale measures three cognitive components of emotional intelligence: attention to feelings, clarity of feelings, and mood repair. Scores on the TMMS are utilized to analyse stable individual differences in the manner through which individuals respond to their emotional states. [6] Individuals who score high on the TMMS scale have less melancholic thoughts, lower levels of anxiety and depression, and lower rates of borderline personality disorders. In a 7-week study examining the link between meta-mood and subjective happiness, higher scores on the TMMS were associated with fewer negative psychological reactions to interpersonal conflicts, measured through cortisol and blood pressure changes. [10]

Related Research Articles

Emotional intelligence (EI), emotional leadership (EL), emotional quotient (EQ) and emotional intelligence quotient (EIQ), is the capability of individuals to recognize their own emotions and those of others, discern between different feelings and label them appropriately, use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior, and manage and/or adjust emotions to adapt to environments or achieve one's goal(s). Although the term first appeared in 1964, it gained popularity in the 1995 book Emotional Intelligence, written by the science journalist Daniel Goleman.

Dialectical behavior therapy to treat borderline personality disorder

Dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) is an evidence-based psychotherapy that began with efforts to treat borderline personality disorder. There is evidence that DBT can be useful in treating mood disorders, suicidal ideation, and for change in behavioral patterns such as self-harm, and substance abuse. DBT evolved into a process in which the therapist and client work with acceptance and change-oriented strategies, and ultimately balance and synthesize them, in a manner comparable to the philosophical dialectical process of hypothesis and antithesis, followed by synthesis.

Coping means to invest one's own conscious effort, to solve personal and interpersonal problems, in order to try to master, minimize or tolerate stress and conflict.

Affective forecasting is the prediction of one's affect in the future. As a process that influences preferences, decisions, and behavior, affective forecasting is studied by both psychologists and economists, with broad applications.

Affect, in psychology, refers to the underlying experience of feeling, emotion or mood.

Meta-emotion is "an organized and structured set of emotions and cognitions about the emotions, both one's own emotions and the emotions of others". This broad definition of meta-emotion sparked psychologists' interest in the topic, particularly regarding parental meta-emotion philosophy.

Dispositional affect, similar to mood, is a personality trait or overall tendency to respond to situations in stable, predictable ways. This trait is expressed by the tendency to see things in a positive or negative way. People with high positive affectivity tend to perceive things through "pink lens" while people with high negative affectivity tend to perceive things through "black lens". The level of dispositional affect affects the sensations and behavior immediately and most of the time in unconscious ways, and its effect can be prolonged. Research shows that there is a correlation between dispositional affect and important aspects in psychology and social science, such as personality, culture, decision making, negotiation, psychological resilience, perception of career barriers, and coping with stressful life events. That is why this topic is important both in social psychology research and organizational psychology research.

Discrete emotion theory is the claim that there is a small number of core emotions. For example, Silvan Tomkins (1962) concluded that there are eight basic emotions: surprise, interest, joy, rage, fear, disgust, shame, and anguish. More recently, Carroll Izard at the University of Delaware factor analytically delineated 12 discrete emotions labeled: Interest, Joy, Surprise, Sadness, Anger, Disgust, Contempt, Self-Hostility, Fear, Shame, Shyness, and Guilt.

Positive affectivity (PA) is a human characteristic that describes how much people experience positive affects ; and as a consequence how they interact with others and with their surroundings.

Negative affectivity

Negative affectivity (NA), or negative affect, is a personality variable that involves the experience of negative emotions and poor self-concept. Negative affectivity subsumes a variety of negative emotions, including anger, contempt, disgust, guilt, fear, and nervousness. Low negative affectivity is characterized by frequent states of calmness and serenity, along with states of confidence, activeness, and great enthusiasm.

Affect measures are used in the study of human affect, and refer to measures obtained from self-report studies asking participants to quantify their current feelings or average feelings over a longer period of time. Even though some affect measures contain variations that allow assessment of basic predispositions to experience a certain emotion, tests for such stable traits are usually considered to be personality tests.

Emotions in the workplace play a large role in how an entire organization communicates within itself and to the outside world. "Events at work have real emotional impact on participants. The consequences of emotional states in the workplace, both behaviors and attitudes, have substantial significance for individuals, groups, and society". "Positive emotions in the workplace help employees obtain favorable outcomes including achievement, job enrichment and higher quality social context". "Negative emotions, such as fear, anger, stress, hostility, sadness, and guilt, however increase the predictability of workplace deviance,", and how the outside world views the organization.

The traits of extraversion and introversion are a central dimension in some human personality theories. The terms introversion and extraversion were popularized by Carl Jung, although both the popular understanding and psychological usage differ from his original intent. Extraversion tends to be manifested in outgoing, talkative, energetic behavior, whereas introversion is manifested in more reserved and solitary behavior. Rather than focusing on interpersonal behavior, however, Jung defined introversion as an "attitude-type characterised by orientation in life through subjective psychic contents", and extraversion as "an attitude-type characterised by concentration of interest on the external object".

Subjective well-being (SWB) is a self-reported measure of well-being, typically obtained by questionnaire.

Mood repair strategies offer techniques that an individual can use to shift their mood from general sadness or clinical depression to a state of greater contentment or happiness. A mood repair strategy is a cognitive, behavioral, and interpersonal psychological tool used to affect the mood regulation of an individual. Various mood repair strategies are most commonly used in cognitive therapy. They are commonly assigned as homework by therapists in order to help positively impact individuals who are experiencing dysphoria or depression. However, these tools can also be used for individuals experiencing temporary unwanted moods. Many factors go into the effectiveness of mood repair strategies on an individual ranging from the client's self-esteem to their experience with the strategy being used. Even the way the mood repair strategy is presented may have an effect on that strategy's ability to improve mood.

The psychology of music preference refers to the psychological factors behind peoples' different music preferences. Music is heard by people daily in many parts of the world, and affects people in various ways from emotion regulation to cognitive development, along with providing a means for self-expression. Music training has been shown to help improve intellectual development and ability, though no connection has been found as to how it affects emotion regulation. Numerous studies have been conducted to show that individual personality can have an effect on music preference, mostly using personality, though a recent meta-analysis has shown that personality in itself explains little variance in music preferences. These studies are not limited to American culture, as they have been conducted with significant results in countries all over the world, including Japan, Germany, and Spain, and Brazil.

Interpersonal emotion regulation is the process of changing the emotional experience of one's self or another person through social interaction. It encompasses both intrinsic emotion regulation, in which one attempts to alter their own feelings by recruiting social resources, as well as extrinsic emotion regulation, in which one deliberately attempts to alter the trajectory of other people's feelings.

Emotional eating is defined as the "propensity to eat in response to positive and negative emotions." While the term "emotional eating" often refers to eating as a means of coping with negative emotions, it also includes eating for positive emotions such as eating foods when celebrating an event or eating to enhance an already good mood. In these situations, emotions are still driving the eating but not in a negative way.

Intelligence and personality have traditionally been studied as separate entities in psychology, but more recent work has increasingly challenged this view. An increasing number of studies have recently explored the relationship between intelligence and personality, in particular the Big Five personality traits.

Emotional approach coping is a psychological construct that involves the use of emotional processing and emotional expression in response to a stressful situation. As opposed to emotional avoidance, in which emotions are experienced as a negative, undesired reaction to a stressful situation, emotional approach coping involves the conscious use of emotional expression and processing to better deal with a stressful situation. The construct was developed to explain an inconsistency in the stress and coping literature: emotion-focused coping was associated with largely maladaptive outcomes while emotional processing and expression was demonstrated to be beneficial.

References

  1. Goleman, Daniel. Emotional Intelligence. New York: Bantam Books, 1995
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Extremera, Natalio; Durán, Auxiliadora; Rey, Lourdes (2009). "The moderating effect of trait meta-mood and perceived stress on life satisfaction". Personality and Individual Differences. 47 (2): 116–121. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2009.02.007. ISSN   0191-8869.
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  5. 1 2 Thompson, Brian L.; Waltz, Jennifer; Croyle, Kristin; Pepper, Alison C. (2007). "Trait meta-mood and affect as predictors of somatic symptoms and life satisfaction". Personality and Individual Differences. 43 (7): 1786–1795. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2007.05.017. ISSN   0191-8869.
  6. 1 2 3 Fitness, Julie; Curtis, Marie (2005-07-08). "Emotional Intelligence and the Trait Meta-Mood Scale: Relationships with Empathy, Attributional Complexity, Self-control, and Responses to Interpersonal Conflict". e-Journal of Applied Psychology. 1 (1): 50–62. doi:10.7790/ejap.v1i1.9. ISSN   1832-7931.
  7. 1 2 3 Canby, Nicholas K.; Cameron, Ian M.; Calhoun, Amrit T.; Buchanan, Gregory M. (2014-11-18). "A Brief Mindfulness Intervention for Healthy College Students and Its Effects on Psychological Distress, Self-Control, Meta-Mood, and Subjective Vitality". Mindfulness. 6 (5): 1071–1081. doi:10.1007/s12671-014-0356-5. ISSN   1868-8527. S2CID   144901037.
  8. 1 2 3 Rey, Lourdes; Extremera, Natalio; Durán, Ma Auxiliadora (2012). "Core self-evaluations, meta-mood experience, and happiness: Tests of direct and moderating effects". Personality and Individual Differences. 53 (3): 207–212. doi:10.1016/j.paid.2012.03.009. ISSN   0191-8869.
  9. Salguero, José M.; Fernández-Berrocal, Pablo; Balluerka, Nekane; Aritzeta, Aitor (1 October 2010). "Measuring Perceived Emotional Intelligence in the Adolescent Population: Psychometric Properties of the Trait Meta-Mood Scale". Social Behavior and Personality. 38 (9): 1197–1209. doi:10.2224/sbp.2010.38.9.1197 . Retrieved 27 September 2011.
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