An experimental approach to training mood for resilience
Vasileios Mantas1,2, Vasileia Kotoula3, Charles Zheng4
11st Department of Psychiatry, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Aiginiteion Hospital, Athens, Greece.
Plos One
|September 7, 2023
Summary
This study explored mood training by exposing participants to controlled reward environments. Findings show specific environments can enhance mood resilience to negative stimuli, suggesting potential clinical applications.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Cognitive Science
- Behavioral Economics
Background:
- Mood regulation theories suggest environmental exposure shapes emotional responses.
- Controlled reward and punishment environments may offer a pathway for mood training.
- Investigating mood resilience to negative stimuli is crucial for understanding emotional regulation.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate experimental settings that enhance mood resilience to negative stimuli.
- To develop and test a novel task for assessing mood-reward relationships.
- To explore the potential clinical utility of mood training.
Main Methods:
- Developed a new online task where participants registered mood based on reward/punishment.
- Recruited 1287 participants via Amazon MTurk across three experimental sets.
- Tested 16 environments, identifying 6 that improved mood resilience, then replicating the top 2.
Main Results:
- Identified 6 task environments significantly improving mood resilience by decreasing loss sensitivity.
- Replicated findings in a new sample, demonstrating sustained effects over multiple task rounds (approx. 2 minutes).
- An environment where positive mood yielded maximum reward showed the most significant and lasting effects.
Conclusions:
- Experimental mood training is feasible, with specific environments enhancing resilience to negative stimuli.
- Findings provide a foundation for understanding mood training mechanisms.
- This research opens avenues for exploring mood training's clinical applications.
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