Citation

Johnston TE, Petrova K, Mehta A, Gross JJ, McEvoy P, Preece DA. Aust. Psychol. 2024; 59(4): 367-376.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2024, Australian Psychological Society, Publisher Wiley-Blackwell)

DOI

10.1080/00050067.2023.2290734

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Beliefs about the controllability and usefulness of emotions may influence successful emotion regulation across multiple emotional disorders and could thus be influential mechanisms in long-term mental health outcomes. However, to date there has been little empirical work in this area. Our aim was to fill this gap, by examining the links between emotion beliefs and common emotional disorder symptoms. Specifically, we examined whether emotion beliefs can account for significant variance in depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms, and explored which profiles of emotion beliefs might characterise each of these symptom categories. A sample of 948 Australian university students completed self-report measures of emotion beliefs and emotional disorder symptoms. A path analysis indicated that emotion beliefs accounted for a modest but significant 11%, 12%, and 9% of the variance in depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms, respectively (ps <.001). A latent profile analysis revealed six different profiles of combinations of emotion beliefs and emotional disorder symptom levels, collectively reinforcing the transdiagnostic relevance of emotion beliefs across each symptom category. Overall, our results indicate the importance of considering emotion beliefs in conceptualisations of depression, anxiety, and stress, and suggest that emotion beliefs may be a useful assessment and treatment target. What is already known about this topic: Ford and Gross's (2018, 2019) theoretical framework of emotion beliefs posits that believing positive and negative emotions are uncontrollable and useless is detrimental for emotion regulation efforts and mental health outcomes.Beliefs about emotions being uncontrollable are associated with increased emotional disorder symptoms.The limited research examining beliefs about the usefulness of emotions indicates that believing emotions are useless is also associated with increased emotional disorder symptoms. Ford and Gross's (2018, 2019) theoretical framework of emotion beliefs posits that believing positive and negative emotions are uncontrollable and useless is detrimental for emotion regulation efforts and mental health outcomes. Beliefs about emotions being uncontrollable are associated with increased emotional disorder symptoms. The limited research examining beliefs about the usefulness of emotions indicates that believing emotions are useless is also associated with increased emotional disorder symptoms. What this topic adds: This study is the first to comprehensively examine controllability and usefulness beliefs across the negative and positive valence domains.We systematically mapped the emotion belief profiles characterising depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms, and found profiles with stronger maladaptive emotion beliefs tended to have greater emotional disorder symptoms.We found that both belief categories across both valence domains are relevant to emotional disorder symptoms, but beliefs about the controllability of negative emotion were particularly important. This study is the first to comprehensively examine controllability and usefulness beliefs across the negative and positive valence domains. We systematically mapped the emotion belief profiles characterising depression, anxiety, and stress symptoms, and found profiles with stronger maladaptive emotion beliefs tended to have greater emotional disorder symptoms. We found that both belief categories across both valence domains are relevant to emotional disorder symptoms, but beliefs about the controllability of negative emotion were particularly important.

Keywords

Anxiety; depression; emotion beliefs; profile; psychopathology; stress