Abstract
It is widely assumed that homeostatic control mechanisms regulate mood fluctuations whenever they deviate from a single set point. However, these mechanisms seem to be insufficient to explain the rich flexibility shown by the affective system. Much like the multistable physiological systems that operate on different time scales under allometric control, the affective system may show multistability. In this study, we looked for the signature of multistability, i.e. scaling, to test the hypothesis that mood and anxiety fluctuations are under allometric control, and we explored the associations between scaling and several emotion regulation strategies. Thirty-two undergraduate students reported mood and anxiety scores three times per day for a period of 50 days. Each time series was analyzed to obtain the scaling exponent h. In all cases .5 < h < 1, thus lending support to the main hypothesis of the study. Anxiety scaling exponents were associated with both positive reappraisal and refocusing strategies. Future research should focus on the association between the loss of multistability and socioemotional unflexibility.
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Acknowledgments
This research was supported by Grant PSI2009-12711 from the Spanish Government. The authors would like to thank Dr. Wolfgang Tschacher for his helpful comments on an earlier version of the mansucript, Dr. Jordi Llabrés for providing the online assessment tools and Dr. Miquel Noguera for his mathematical assistance.
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Bornas, X., Balle, M., Morillas-Romero, A. et al. Allometric control of daily mood and anxiety fluctuations. Motiv Emot 39, 571–579 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-015-9471-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-015-9471-4