Identifying profiles of affective change: An ecological momentary assessment of flourishers

The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotion suggests that higher levels of positive affect promote an independently measurable state of high psychological well-being termed flourishing. Levels of self-perceived flourishing have been shown to be influenced by past affect, and there is some indication that flourishing may influence future affect. Our study addressed 2 questions: (a) whether a person-centered latent profile analysis based on momentary affective dynamics (intercept, stability, and variability) would identify the expected flourishing profile and (b) whether this profile would exhibit predicted bidirectional relationships between affective experience and self-reported flourishing status. A sample of 1,152 early adults reported momentary positive and negative affect 4 times a day and daily self-perceived flourishing for 13 days. Latent profile analysis identified 3 affective profiles: a positive profile, a mixed profile, and a negative profile. Our results indicate that distinct groups of people can be identified by their affective profiles and that momentary affect predicts changes in future self-perceptions of flourishing. However, we failed to find support for the view that self-perceptions of flourishing reliably predicted changes in levels of future affect. Thus, we only provide mixed support for the broaden-and-build theory and failed to support a key inference of the framework, a bidirectional relationship between experienced affect and self-perceptions of flourishing (at least on the scale of daily momentary change). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).