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Positive Affectivity: Specificity of Its Facet Level Relations with Psychopathology

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Abstract

This study sought to explicate the strength and direction of the relations between specific facets of positive affectivity (joviality, self-assurance, attentiveness, and serenity) and a broad range of psychopathology. Internalizing, externalizing, mania, and psychoticism were assessed using both self-report and interview measures in a diverse community sample (N = 255; Mage = 45.1 years; 58.4 % African American, 33.3 % Caucasian). Our results indicated that these positive affectivity facets demonstrated distinctive patterns of relations with psychopathology and exhibited incremental predictive power beyond that explained by negative affectivity. In particular, self-assurance displayed notable positive relations with externalizing and mania, emerging as a somewhat maladaptive variant of positive affectivity. Joviality also related positively to manic symptoms. In contrast, serenity and attentiveness related negatively to such indicators and to psychopathology more generally. These data provide strong evidence that incremental information is gained by examining positive affectivity–psychopathology relations at the facet level.

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Notes

  1. Participants were not administered the specific PANAS-X negative affect facet scales, which prevented us from examining relations with these measures.

  2. This study was ongoing when DSM-5 was finalized. Our version of GAD included proposed changes that were later rejected by the American Psychiatric Association, so that our version of the GAD diagnosis differs slightly from what is presented in DSM-5.

  3. We conducted additional analyses to examine whether the results differed substantially as a function of gender and clinical status (i.e., participants who indicated current or past therapy and/or current medication for psychological issues), but we found no systematic differences as a function of these variables. Thus, we focus here on presenting and discussing results from our overall sample.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Lee Anna Clark, David A. Smith, Mark Godding, Haley Heibel, Ana Hernandez, Brittany Katz, Katie Kraemer, Mallory Meter, John Souter, Nadia Suzuki, and Elizabeth Yahiro for their help in the preparation of this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, 118 Haggar Hall, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, 46556, USA

    Kasey Stanton, Stephanie Ellickson-Larew & David Watson

  2. Knox College, Galesburg, IL, 61401, USA

    Sara M. Stasik-O’Brien

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  1. Kasey Stanton
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Correspondence to Kasey Stanton.

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Kasey Stanton, Sara M. Stasik-O’Brien, Stephanie Ellickson-Larew, David Watson declare that they have no conflict of interest (financial or non-financial).

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Stanton, K., Stasik-O’Brien, S.M., Ellickson-Larew, S. et al. Positive Affectivity: Specificity of Its Facet Level Relations with Psychopathology. Cogn Ther Res 40, 593–605 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10608-016-9773-1

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