(PS10-D80) Cognitive Impulsivity and Self-criticism as Predictors of Affect Intensity and Affect Lability in Daily Life

Background: Affect lability is a pivotal characteristic of emotion dysregulation (Contrardi et al., 2018). Emotion dysregulation is maintained via cognitive mechanisms such as self-criticism (Shahmoradi et al., 2021) and cognitive impulsivity (Dvorak et al., 2013). Cognitive impulsivity is defined as rumination and cognitive biases in resposnse to emotions (Carver et al., 2011). The present study assessed how cognitive impulsivity and self-criticism (trait, intensity, and variability) predicted both the intensity and lability of positive and negative affect experienced in daily life.

Methods: Participants (N = 151) completed a one-week ecological momentary assessment (EMA) study. At baseline, participants completed trait measures of cognitive impulsivity (Carver et al., 2013) and self-criticism (Thompson and Zuroff, 2004). During the EMA portion, participants were prompted 5 times a day and rated their momentary levels of positive affect, negative affect, and self-criticism. Before analysis, average intensity of positive affect, negative affect, and momentary self-criticism were calculated over the course of the one-week period. Positive and negative affect lability and self-criticism lability were measured using the mean squared successive difference (MSSD).The MSSD is an estimation of variability that takes into account both low temporal dependency and extreme fluctuations between data points across time, where higher scores reflect greater lability.

Results: Four hierarchical regressions predicted negative affect intensity, positive affect intensity, positive affect lability, and negative affect lability. In each model, Step 1 included trait cognitive impulsivity and trait self-criticism as predictors, and Step 2 added average momentary self-criticism and average self-criticism lability as predictors. Results revealed that increased cognitive impulsivity was associated with increased negative affect intensity and higher positive and negative affect lability. Trait self-criticism predicted increased negative affect intensity, decreased positive affect intensity, and increased negative affect lability. When adding EMA self-criticism variables in Step 2, trait cognitive impulsivity was no longer uniquely associated with any outcome, though higher trait self-criticism was still predictive of higher negative and lower positive affect intensity. Finally, higher average momentary self-criticism predicted higher negative affect intensity and decreased positive affect lability. Greater lability in self-criticism was associated with increased lability in both positive and negative affect.

Conclusion: The results suggest that momentary, trait levels, and lability of self-criticism all tend to be robust predictors of affect intensity and lability. In particular, momentary measures of self-criticism lability and intensity were as much if not more robust predictors of affect intensity and lability than trait measures. This suggests that momentary self-criticism measures may be valid predictors of momentary emotion dysregulation, and clinicians should further explore momentary measures of self-criticism in the future as they relate to various psychopathologies.