E-ISSN : 2733-4538
Depressive disorders are known to be closely related to emotional dysregulation and therefore, emotional instability. Previous studies suggested that emotional instability can be characterized by two components, emotional variability and emotional inertia, the indice of which are emotional variability and emotional inertia, respectively, but there have been few studies which comprehensively examined emotional instability of depressed individuals. The current study, by utilizing experience sampling method, aimed to compare variance and autocorrelation with the Mean Square Successive Difference, a newly introduced index of emotional instability reflecting both variability and inertia of emotion. In addition, this study aimed to examine the dynamics of emotional instability with respect to activation dimension as well as valence dimension of emotion. For this purpose, 25 participants with depression and 24 non-depressed participants were asked to rate their positive-activated (happy, pleasant), positive-deactivated (calm, comfortable), negative-activated (irritated, anxious), and negative-deactivated (depressed, tired) emotional states, five times a day for seven consecutive days. The results of the independent sample t-tests were as follows: First, participants with depression displayed higher valence variability, activation variability, and spin compared with non-depressed individuals, while no significant group difference in pulse was found. Second, there was no significant group difference in valence and activation of emotional inertia. Third, the depressed group showed significantly higher scores in valence and activation of mean successive difference, compared with the non-depressed group. The current study is significant with respect to the synthetically analyzed dynamics of emotional instability by comparing three major indexes including variance, autocorrelation, and mean square successive difference, as well as by considering two dimensions of emotion.
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