At the intersection of affective neuroscience and psychology, researchers have aimed to understand how individual differences in the neural processing of affective events map onto to real-world emotional experiences and evaluations of well-being.Using a longitudinal dataset from 52 adults in the Midlife in the US (MIDUS) study, we provide an integrative model of affective functioning: less amygdala persistence following negative images predicts greater positive affect in daily life, which in turn predicts greater psychological well-being seven years later. Thus, day-to-day experiences of positive affect comprise a promising intermediate step that links individual differences in neural dynamics to complex judgements of psychological wellbeing.

There has been increasing recognition that classically defined psychiatric disorders cluster hierarchically. However, the degree to which this hierarchical taxonomy manifests in the distribution of one's daily affective experience is unknown. In 462 young adults, we assessed psychiatric symptoms across internalizing and externalizing disorders and then used cell-phone-based ecological momentary assessment (EMA) to assess the distribution (mean, standard deviation, skew, kurtosis) of one's positive and negative affect over 3-4 months. Psychiatric symptoms were modeled using a higher-order factor model that estimated internalizing and externalizing spectra as well as specific disorders. Individualized factor loadings were extracted, and path models assessed associations between spectra and syndromes, and daily affect. Internalizing and externalizing spectra displayed broad differences in the distribution of affective experiences, while within the internalizing spectrum, syndromes loading onto fear and distress subfactors were associated with distinct patterns of affective experiences.

Biases in processing ambiguous emotional stimuli are thought to precede, and confer risk for, clinical depression. It has long been theorized that those who appraise ambiguous stimuli more negatively experience greater negative and less positive emotion in their day-to-day life, which in turn relates to symptoms of depression. To test this theory, we assessed links between a negativity bias task, ecological momentary assessments of emotion, and self-reported symptoms of depression in 154 young adults. Here, negativity bias was operationalized as the degree to which ambiguous emotional faces were rated negatively. We found that greater negativity bias in the laboratory predicted greater daily mean negative affect and lower positive affect across the semester. Critically, we also found that mean daily affect linked negativity bias with symptoms of depression. These results highlight how individual differences in information processing may be connected to real-world emotional profiles and risk for psychopathology.

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Negative interpretation bias, the tendency to appraise ambiguous stimuli as threatening, shapes our emotional lives. Various laboratory tasks, which differ in stimuli features and task procedures, can quantify negative interpretation bias. However, it is unknown whether these tasks globally predict individual differences in real-world negative (NA) and positive (PA) affect. Across two studies, we tested whether different lab-based negative interpretation bias tasks predict daily NA and PA, measured via mobile phone across months. To quantify negative interpretation bias, Study 1 (N = 69) used a verbal, self-referential task whereas Study 2 (N = 110) used a perceptual, emotional image task with faces and scenes. Across tasks, negative interpretation bias was linked to heightened daily NA. However, only negative interpretation bias in response to ambiguous faces was related to decreased daily PA. These results illustrate the ecological validity of negative interpretation bias tasks and highlight converging and unique relationships between distinct tasks and naturalistic emotion.