For more:
OA Paper: osf.io/cqpuz_v1
Data and code: doi.org/10.17605/OSF...
Blog post: pandelisperakakis.info/2025/02/05/r...

#AffectDynamics #PsychologicalScience #MentalHealth #WellBeing

Next steps: Establishing the importance of affect shifts impact well-being opens the road to:

1) Identify personal triggers for transitions between positive & negative states.

2) Focus on tailored interventions to enhance resilience.

Simply asking “Do you feel good or bad?” is:

1) More intuitive than rating emotions on abstract numerical scales
2) Easier to track daily
3) A better predictor of well-being
4) Suitable for real-time monitoring

We used to think feeling more positive was key to well-being—someone scoring 40 in happiness is better off than someone scoring 20.

But our results show bouncing back from negativity matters more.

This has major implications for clinical practice! 👇

Using multiple regression methods, we found that how often people shift between positive and negative affect better predicts well-being (anxiety, depression, life satisfaction, resilience, flourishing) than the intensity of their feelings.

Here’s why this matters 👇

To capture this pattern, we developed 10 novel metrics to quantify affective bistability—measuring both how often and how intensely people shifted between feeling good and bad.

And that's when the surprise came👇

We asked 121 healthy adults in Spain and Germany:
"How do you feel right now?" (rated from very bad to very good) 6 times a day for a month.

About 54% showed abrupt shifts between feeling good and bad—a pattern we called "Affective Bistability".

Simply asking “Do you feel good or bad?” is:

1) More intuitive than rating emotions on abstract numerical scales
2) Easier to track daily
3) A better predictor of well-being
4) Suitable for real-time monitoring

We used to think feeling more positive was key to well-being—someone scoring 40 in happiness is better off than someone scoring 20.

But our results show bouncing back from negativity matters more.

This may have major implications for clinical practice 👇

Using multiple regression methods, we found that how often people shift between positive and negative affect better predicts well-being (anxiety, depression, life satisfaction, resilience, flourishing) than the intensity of their feelings.

Here’s why this matters 👇

To capture this pattern, we developed 10 novel metrics to quantify affective bistability—measuring both how often and how intensely people shifted between feeling good and bad.

And that's when the surprise came👇

We asked 121 healthy adults in Spain and Germany:
"How do you feel right now?" (rated from very bad to very good) 6 times a day for a month.

About 54% showed abrupt shifts between feeling good and bad—a pattern we called "Affective Bistability".