Relations of Positive and Negative Emotion Reactivity to Depressive Symptoms: A Multimethod Approach

Emotion Context Insensitivity (ECI) hypothesizes that depression relates to blunted positive and negative emotion reactivity. Despite broad support for ECI, studies often generate contrary results. The primary goal of this paper was to ascertain whether these disparities might be due to the use of different measurement strategies. One conventional questionnaire and four multilevel emotion reactivity assessments were used to examine this possibility in a sample of 712 general population adults. The questionnaire method revealed that depressive symptoms were related to lower positive and higher negative emotion reactivity; however, these relations were largely explained by individuals' average affect. The four multilevel emotion reactivity approaches generated highly consistent findings that both positive and negative emotion reactivity are negatively related to depressive symptoms, even controlling for individuals' average affect. Multilevel methods provided strong support for ECI, whereas the questionnaire method did not distinguish well between individuals' emotion reactivity and their average affect.