Beyond avoidance: negative lying flat and emotional distress among Chinese youth in a 10-day daily diary study

Negative lying flat (NLF) is a culturally salient form of withdrawal among Chinese youth. In this study, NLF was operationalized as diminished goal pursuit and reduced willingness to expend effort. We examined whether daily NLF is distinguishable from experiential avoidance (EA) and how both are temporally related to anxiety and depressive symptoms.

Participants were 201 Chinese university students (34.8% male; Mage = 21.04 years, SD = 1.40) who provided 1,863 valid observations across 10 scheduled weekday assessments over two weeks. Three DSEM models examined NLF and EA (Model A), anxiety with both withdrawal constructs (Model B), and depressive symptoms with both withdrawal constructs (Model C), while adjusting between-person components for age and gender. Corresponding NLF and EA paths were compared using posterior contrasts. Calendar-day sensitivity analyses represented the two weekend days as systematically missing within a 12-day calendar.

Model A showed no reliable within-person cross-lagged associations between NLF and EA (NLF→EA: β = 0.030, 95% CrI [-0.046, 0.099]; EA→NLF: β = 0.053, 95% CrI [-0.010, 0.115]). In the joint emotional-distress models, anxiety predicted subsequent NLF (β = 0.113, 95% CrI [0.050, 0.184]) and NLF predicted subsequent anxiety (β = 0.082, 95% CrI [0.023, 0.153]); depressive symptoms predicted subsequent NLF (β = 0.085, 95% CrI [0.015, 0.152]) and NLF predicted subsequent depressive symptoms (β = 0.075, 95% CrI [0.006, 0.134]). Corresponding EA paths included zero, and posterior contrasts did not establish differences between corresponding NLF and EA paths. Calendar-day estimates were similar in direction and magnitude, but the NLF-to-anxiety and NLF-to-depressive-symptoms credible intervals marginally included zero.

Primary models identified reciprocal short-lag associations between NLF and emotional distress that were not observed for EA. Taken together, these findings support continued investigation of NLF as a goal-and-effort withdrawal process in daily emotional adjustment, without establishing stronger effects than EA.