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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2018 Apr 1.
Published in final edited form as: J Couns Psychol. 2017 Feb 20;64(3):269–279. doi: 10.1037/cou0000194

Depression Symptoms Moderate the Association between Emotion and Communal Behavior

Lance M Rappaport 1, DS Moskowitz 2, Bianca D’Antono 3
PMCID: PMC5383511  NIHMSID: NIHMS842091  PMID: 28221084

Abstract

Depression is associated with emotion regulation deficits which manifest as elevated negative affect and greater continuation of negative affect over time. The present study examined a possible emotion regulatory deficit, whether depression symptoms attenuate the association between communal (i.e., agreeable, quarrelsome) behavior and affect. A community sample reported on depression and anxiety symptoms before recording their affect and behavior following naturally-occurring interpersonal interactions over 21 days. Participants’ behaviors were measured using items selected to represent the Interpersonal Circumplex Model of behavior. Results indicated an association between affect and communal behavior, which was stronger for negative than positive affect. Depression symptoms moderated this association; elevated depression symptoms were associated with decreased association of affect and interpersonal behavior. Comorbid anxiety symptoms did not moderate this association. Results suggest that elevated depression symptoms are associated with a diminished ability to adapt communal behavior to emotion cues. Given prior evidence of elevated overall quarrelsome behavior among individuals with elevated depression symptoms, this may demonstrate an interpersonal mechanism by which emotion regulation deficits impact the generation of interpersonal problems.

Keywords: depression, emotion regulation, interpersonal behavior, ecological momentary assessment, event-contingent recording

Deficits in emotion regulation have been associated with a range of psychopathology including borderline personality disorder, major depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, eating disorders, and substance-use disorder. Research has generally focused on the regulation and reduction of negative emotions (see Aldao, Nolen-Hoeksema, & Schweizer, 2010 for review) and suggested that each disorder may be associated with specific emotion regulatory deficits at different points in the experience of emotion. If so, the nature of these specific deficits may inform the assessment and guide treatment of disorders characterized by emotion regulatory deficits. The present research examined whether depression is associated with a specific emotion regulation deficit relevant to interpersonal behavior. If so, such a deficit may contribute to an understanding of how emotional dysregulation leads to interpersonal problems and interpersonal stress.

Emotion Regulation Deficits

Internalizing psychopathology has consistently been associated with elevated negative affect and diminished positive affect. Investigation of the cognitive, biological, behavioral, and neurological mechanisms that comprise the experience of affect are summarized within emotion regulatory theory (see Gross & Thompson, 2007). This theory summarizes the process from affective stimulus (e.g., negative social interaction) to cognitive appraisal, biological reaction, and behavioral attempts to address the resulting shift in affect. Emotion regulation deficits may apply to each stage of the process. For example, emotion regulation deficits may describe elevated reactivity to a standard stressor or difficulty altering one’s behavior to downregulate the resulting distress. The present study is concerned with a specific emotion regulatory deficit related to an individual’s ability to alter interpersonal behavior to respond to changes in affect.

Several specific deficits in regulating emotions have been identified among individuals with elevated depressed symptoms, which indicate difficulty downregulating (i.e., decreasing) negative affect and upregulating (i.e., increasing or maintaining) positive affect. Laboratory-based research indicates an association of depression with difficulty coping (Berking & Wupperman, 2012), specifically a lack of initiating emotion regulatory behavior that might downregulate negative affect (Berking, Wirtz, Svaldi, & Hofmann, 2014; Radkovsky, McArdle, Bockting, & Berking, 2014). Patterns of affect in situ have the potential to provide the understanding of additional patterns of emotional dysregulation, and its consequences. For example, using time-sampled intensive repeated measures of affect, Peeters, Nicolson, Berkhof, Delespaul, and de Vries (2003) demonstrated emotional inertia among individuals with depression; negative affect persisted longer among individuals with diagnosed major depressive disorder than among healthy control participants.

Hammen (1991) found that depression is associated with elevated risk for stress, particularly interpersonal problems. Coyne, Hokanson, Joiner, and colleagues suggested that elevated risk for interpersonal problems may result from depressotypic interpersonal behavior patterns, such as elevated quarrelsome behavior (e.g., Hokanson & Butler, 1992). If depression is associated with impairment in modulating behavior in response to negative affect, then it is also possible that depression is associated with deficits in modulating interpersonal behavior, which has been associated with increased distress (Tracey, 2005; Tracey & Rohlfing, 2010). Thus, a specific emotion regulatory deficit (i.e., difficulty modulating interpersonal behavior in response to affect cues) may impact on the generation of interpersonal stressors. The present study used an intensive repeated measurement in daily life procedure to provide a test of part of this hypothesis by examining whether elevated depressive symptoms are associated with a deficit in emotion regulatory behavior as reflected in the disassociation of affect and interpersonal behavior during participants’ daily lives.

Depression Symptoms and Interpersonal Behavior

Considerable research suggests that depression symptoms are associated with elevated quarrelsome behavior (Hokanson & Butler, 1992; Kahn, Coyne, & Margolin, 1985; Rappaport, Moskowitz, & D’Antono, 2014). One explanation for elevated quarrelsome behavior is that depressed individuals respond more to social cues which elicit quarrelsome behavior. However, research has suggested that depression symptoms may also be associated with decreased reactivity of communal behavior in response to the behavior of another person (Zuroff, Fournier, & Moskowitz, 2007), which may be associated with elevated distress (Tracey, 2005; Tracey & Rohlfing, 2010). If elevated depression symptoms are associated with hypo-reactivity of communal behavior to socioemotional information, individuals with elevated depression symptoms may be at greater risk for interpersonal problems not only through elevated overall quarrelsome behavior but also by greater rigidity of behavior in response to affective cues.

Behavioral Rigidity

The term “behavioral rigidity” has been used to refer both to individuals with a restricted set of behavioral responses (O’Connor & Dyce, 1997; Paulhus & Martin, 1988) and to a weakened association between behavior and socioemotional cues (Tracey, 2004, 2005; Tracey & Rohlfing, 2010). Whereas the first use of the term indicates that the individual may have a limited range of behavioral strategies; the latter term refers to a diminished ability to react to socioemotional information. The present research examined the second type of behavioral rigidity. Côté and Moskowitz (1998) demonstrated that neuroticism was associated with weakened relations between affect and communal behaviors. Neuroticism has been associated with a variety of negative interpersonal outcomes (see Roberts, Kuncel, Shiner, Caspi, & Goldberg, 2007 for review) suggesting the possibility that reduced reactivity of communal behavior to socioemotional information may negatively impact social interactions and contribute to the generation of interpersonal stress (e.g., Hammen, 1991).

The Interpersonal Circumplex Model of Behavior

The Interpersonal Circumplex Model of Behavior can be used as a model for systematically sampling from the domain of interpersonal behaviors (see Pincus & Wright, 2011 for review of the interpersonal circumplex model in relation to psychopathology). The model consists of two orthogonal, intersecting dimensions (Leary, 1957; Wiggins, 1991). The horizontal dimension encompasses communal aspects of behavior including motivation for connectedness. The vertical dimension encompasses agentic aspects of behavior including motivations for agency and mastery. These two orthogonal dimensions have also been conceptualized as four behavioral poles which are agreeable, quarrelsome, dominant, and submissive behavior. Examples of agreeable behaviors include complimenting another person and pointing out where there is agreement whereas examples of quarrelsome behavior include criticizing another person and ignoring others’ comments. The present study focused on communal behaviors given prior evidence suggesting particularly strong associations of affect with communal behavior (Côté & Moskowitz, 1998; Moskowitz & Côté, 1995).

The Present Study

Prior evidence on the affective dynamics of individuals with elevated depression symptoms indicates impairment in responding to negative affect with emotion regulatory behavior, such as by modifying one’s interpersonal behavior. Emerging research on emotion regulation also indicates the importance of an individual’s ability to adapt behavior in response to positive affect, which may serve to buoy one’s positive affect in response to stressful events in daily life (du Pont, Welker, Gilbert, & Gruber, in press). As an initial test of whether depression is associated with diminished modulation of interpersonal behavior in response to changes in affect, the present study examined whether depressive symptoms moderated the association of event-level variation in positive and negative affect with event-level variation in interpersonal behavior during naturally-occurring interpersonal interactions. Consistent with Gross and Thompson (2007), we use the terms ‘affect’ and ‘emotion’ interchangeably.

Behavior was measured using an intensive repeated-measure in naturalistic settings design (IRM-NS), specifically event-contingent recording (ECR), which permitted examining the naturalistic, event-level association between emotion and interpersonal behavior for individuals. Whereas intensive repeated-measures research on affect generally assesses participants at random or fixed time intervals to obtain a sample of affect throughout the day, measurement of interpersonal behavior requires assessing participants following opportunities for interpersonal behavior. For this reason, event-contingent recording was used in which participants reported on their affect and interpersonal behavior following interpersonal interactions over the course of 21 days (Moskowitz & Sadikaj, 2011). Recording measurements close in time to events of interest reduces recall bias and allows for more accurate estimation of within-person processes (Mogg, Mathews, & Weinman, 1987). This is particularly critical for the assessment of within-person processes in depression, which may produce considerable recall bias over long intervals (Bradley, Mogg, & Williams, 1995). Behavior, affect, and symptoms were assessed in a community sample to provide an examination of affect and interpersonal behavior with depression symptoms for a wide range of symptom severity, including subclinical depression.

We first examined whether event-level affect could serve as an emotion regulatory cue by examining its association with communal (i.e., agreeable and quarrelsome) behavior. The strength of this association for negative and positive affect was compared. Consistent with prior literature (see Moskowitz & Côté, 1995), we hypothesized that negative affect would be associated with diminished agreeable behavior and increased quarrelsome behavior. Similarly, we hypothesized that positive affect would be associated with increased agreeable and diminished quarrelsome behavior.

Depression symptoms were then examined as a moderator of the association between affect and communal behavior. Zuroff et al. (2007) report that elevated depression symptoms were associated with diminished reactivity of communal behavior to perceived warmth in the other person’s behavior. We hypothesized that elevated depression symptoms would, similarly, be associated with attenuated reactivity to internal affect cues. Specifically, we hypothesized that depression symptoms would attenuate the association between affect and communal behavior.

Emotion regulation deficits have also been identified among individuals with elevated anxiety (see Cisler, Olatunji, Feldner, & Forsyth, 2010 for review), though the specificity of certain deficits to depression and anxiety is unclear (Mennin, Holaway, Fresco, Moore, & Heimberg, 2007). To examine the specificity of results to depression symptoms, anxiety symptoms were examined as a moderator of the association of interpersonal behaviors and affect.

Method

Participants

Participants were recruited using advertisements in the Montreal area. Informed consent was collected at an initial study session where the study was described. Participants were recruited in three age ranges (18-34 years; 35-44 years; 45-65 years) to provide an even distribution of age. Similar to the population of Montreal, the sample was largely Caucasian and primarily spoke French. Psychophysiological data were obtained on this sample for a separate aspect of the project, which required the following exclusion criteria. Participants were excluded if they (a) had used mental health services within the past year, (b) had known current health problems or medication use relating to cardiovascular, immune, or neuroendocrine functioning, (c) had a learning disability or cognitive disability sufficient to impair their ability to complete questionnaires and study instructions, and (d) were currently on hormone replacement therapy. In total, 84 men and 120 women participated. The final sample ranged in age from 19 to 64 years (M = 40.98, SD = 11.33). Demographic information for the sample is presented in Table 1.

Table 1.

Sample Demographic Information

Variable Mean SD
Age (years) 40.98 11.33
Schooling (years) 16 3.43
N %
Marital Status
 Single 86 43.65
 Married/cohabitating 79 40.10
 Separated/divorced/widowed 27 13.71
 Unknown/Refused to answer 5 2.54
Annual family income (CAD)
 $29,999 and below 65 32.99
 $30,000 – $59,999 69 35.03
 $60,000 and above 58 29.44
 Unknown/Refused to answer 5 2.54
First language spoken
 French 169 85.79
 English 5 2.54
 Other 18 9.14
 Unknown/Refused to answer 5 2.54
Ethnicity
 Caucasian 167 84.77
 African-origin 7 3.55
 Asian-origin 2 1.02
 Hispanic 5 2.54
 Other 11 5.58
 Unknown/Refused to answer 5 2.54
Variable Mean SD
Beck Depression Inventory 8.40 7.17
Beck Anxiety Inventory 5.82 5.99
Mean Agreeable Behavior .17 .07
Mean Quarrelsome Behavior -.20 .06
Mean Dominant Behavior .08 .06
Mean Submissive Behavior -.08 .06
Mean Positive Affect 3.30 .92
Mean Negative Affect .52 .50
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Note.

CAD = Canadian Dollars

Despite the requirement that participants had not utilized mental health services in the past year, examination of scores on the Beck Depression Inventory II indicated a substantial number of participants with mild (N = 30, 15.23%) or moderate-severe (N = 19, 9.64%) symptoms of depression (see Table 1). Severity of depression symptoms was assessed using recommended cutoffs: 14 for mild depression, 19 for moderate depression, and 29 for severe depression (Beck, Steer, & Carbin, 1988).

Missing data were excluded using pairwise deletion for between- and within-person variables. The final sample included 197 participants, 96.6% of the original sample.

Design and Procedure

Following informed consent, participants completed self-report questionnaires assessing symptoms of depression and anxiety (i.e., BDI and BAI) along with measures relevant to other facets of the project (e.g., metabolic burden). Participants were then instructed in completing the event-contingent recording forms and were asked to use these forms to report on substantial interpersonal interactions over the course of the following 21 days. Substantial interactions were defined as interactions lasting at least 5 minutes, as described in Moskowitz and Sadikaj (2011). Each form included assessment of participants’ behavior and affect (subsequently described). Four forms were used in the present study, which were each created with twelve items from the Social Behavior Inventory (see below). Three items were included on each form to assess each of the four poles of the interpersonal circumplex. To reduce the likelihood that participants would form a set response pattern, forms were rotated such that each form was presented for a full day before rotating to the next form. Affect self-report measures are often administered repeatedly following brief intervals (see Shiffman, Stone, & Hufford, 2008 for review). For this reason, participants completed the same affect items following each event. Forms were completed on handheld devices, which recorded the date and time each record was created. Several participants completed forms for more than 21 days, up to 26 days (Mean = 19.52 days). Participants completed between 3 and 242 forms (M = 86.90, SD = 35.56). Number of forms completed was not substantially related to anxiety, r = -.09, p = .20 or depression symptoms, r = -.13, p = .07. The Research and Ethics Board of the Montreal Heart Institute approved this study.

Measures

Depression Severity

Depression symptom severity was assessed using the Beck Depression Inventory II (BDI; Beck, Steer, et al., 1988) which instructs participants to rate symptoms of depression experienced over the past two weeks, such as anhedonia, using a 4-point scale ranging from not at all to severely. As participants were drawn from a primarily French-speaking population, a French version of the BDI was used. Internal consistency and test-retest reliability for the French version is provided by Baron and Laplante (1984). Validity data for the French version in a community sample is provided by Byrne and Baron (1994). In the present sample, inter-item reliability was high, α = .94, ωtotal = .95; scores showed considerable range (0 – 32); see Table 1 for means and SDs for this and other measures.

Anxiety Severity

Anxiety symptom severity was assessed using the Beck Anxiety Inventory (BAI; Beck, Epstein, Brown, & Steer, 1988) which instructs participants to rate symptoms of anxiety experienced over the past two weeks, such as fear, using a 4-point scale ranging from not at all to severely. A French version of the BAI was used; psychometric properties of the French version have been previously established (Freeston, Ladouceur, Thibodeau, Gagnon, & Rhéaume, 1994). In this sample, inter-item reliability was high, α = .94, ωtotal = .95; scores showed considerable range (0 – 32).

Interpersonal Behavior

Participants recorded their interpersonal behavior following each substantial interpersonal interaction using items from the Social Behavior Inventory (SBI; Moskowitz, 1994). The SBI has 12 items to represent prototypical behavior for each of the four poles of the interpersonal circumplex model of behavior. Agreeable and quarrelsome behaviors are represented by items such as, “I exchanged pleasantries” and “I criticized the other(s).” Dominant and submissive behaviors are represented by items such as, “I assigned someone to a task” and “I went along with the other(s).” Participants report their behavior by endorsing sentences which correspond to their behavior. A behavior score for each pole (e.g., agreeable behavior) is computed at each interaction as the number of behaviors endorsed ipsatized by centering within event to account for participant response tendency (Moskowitz & Sadikaj, 2011).

Inter-item reliability has been found to range from .45 (submissive behavior) to .84 (quarrelsome behavior) and behavior scores are stable across days (Brown & Moskowitz,1998; Moskowitz, 1994). A French translation of the SBI was used. Inter-item reliability of the French version was high (Rappaport et al., 2014). With respect to validity of the SBI, self-ratings of behaviors correlate with observer ratings of participant behavior (Mongrain, Vettese, Shuster, & Kendal, 1998). Correlations between scores aggregated over three weeks correspond to expected relations among behavior dimensions based on the interpersonal circumplex model; behavior scores also have been shown to converge with a questionnaire measure of the interpersonal circumplex model, the Interpersonal Adjective Scales-Revised (Moskowitz, 1994; Moskowitz & Côté, 1995). Behavior scores respond predictability to changes in the situation (Moskowitz, Suh, & Desaulniers, 1994).

Affect

Positive and negative affect were assessed by participant self-report on nine items using a scale ranging from 0 (not at all) to 7 (extremely; Diener & Emmons, 1984). Positive affect was calculated as the mean of happy, pleased, enjoyment/fun, and joyful. Negative affect was calculated as the mean of worried/anxious, frustrated, angry/hostile, unhappy, and depressed/sad. Items were administered in French. Inter-item reliability was high for negative (α = .87) and positive (α = .91) affect. When items were averaged across a participant’s interactions; positive and negative affect were inversely correlated (r = -.33, p < .0001). As expected, depression symptoms were correlated with aggregated negative (r = 0.40, p < .0001) and positive affect (r = -.20, p = .004). Similarly, anxiety symptoms were correlated with aggregated negative (r = .46, p < .0001) and positive affect (r = -.16, p = .02).

Data Analysis

Data analysis was conducted in four steps. The data were structured at three levels: event nested within day nested within individual. First, variance decomposition, using the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), was used to evaluate whether events or days were exchangeable within the individual. Following recommendations by de Haan-Rietdijk, Kuppens, and Hamaker (2016), variance decomposition models were conducted with an autoregressive 1 covariance matrix over events. For agreeable behavior, 91.29% of variance was explained at the event level, 1.94% at the day level, and 6.77% at the person level. For quarrelsome behavior, 90.82% of variance was explained at the event level, 1.06% at the day level, and 8.12% at the person level. This indicates that less than 2% of the total variance in behavior is due to nesting within day, which indicated that data may be exchangeable with respect to day.

An optimal model for agreeable and quarrelsome behavior was developed by evaluating constraints for exchangeability of day and the autoregressive covariance matrix for events. Event-level affect was then added in two models, one for positive affect and one for negative affect, to avoid multicollinearity. Depression and anxiety symptoms were then added as main effects and cross-level interactions with affect. The equation for the final, best fitting model was:

Behaviorij=B00+B01depressionj+B02anxietyj+B10affectij+B11depressionj∗affectij+B12anxietyj∗affectij+u0j+u1jaffectij+rij

for agreeable or quarrelsome behavior at time i for person j where u0j and u1j refer to random effects for intercept and slope of affect, respectively, with residual rij. Moderation effects were probed by estimating marginal effects for the average depression symptom level, two standard deviations above the average, and zero, since two standard deviations below the average is negative and, therefore, not a valid response on the measure.

Analyses were conducted using R version 3.2.3 (R Core Team, 2015) using the packages psych for psychometric analysis (Revelle, 2015 and effects (Fox, 2003) and ggplot2 (Wickham, 2009) to plot simple slopes in Figure 1. Additionally, multilevel models were estimated using the nlme package in R (Pinheiro, Bates, DebRoy, Sarkar, & R Core Team, 2016) and SAS software, Version 9.4 MIXED procedure (SAS Institute Inc., 2013). Results were similar between the two packages. Due to the multilevel modeling approach with random effects, confidence intervals of fixed and random effects are available but standardized estimates of fixed effects are not interpretable. Residuals for final models were normally distributed. Significance of random effects was estimated by comparing the -2LL against a nested, constrained model without the given random effect.

Figure 1. Event-level association of communal behavior with positive and negative affect moderated by depression symptom severity.

Figure 1

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Note. Affect scores were centered within person but represent participant-reported event-level affect. Depression symptom severity is presented for simple slopes at the mean for depression symptom severity as well as +/- 2 standard deviations with the caveat that 2 standard deviations below the mean was negative and, for interpretability, set at the boundary representing zero depression symptoms.

Correlations between variance in negative affect with depression and anxiety symptoms were evaluated to ensure that moderation effects were not due to restricted variability in affect or in behavior. Prior research on intraindividual behavioral variability in this sample documented that depression and anxiety symptoms were not associated with restricted variability in interpersonal behavior (Rappaport et al., 2014). To examine variability in affect, the standard deviation of affect was computed over events within person. Greater variability in negative affect was associated with elevated depression, r = .452, p < .0001, and anxiety symptoms, r = .474, p < .0001. Greater variability in positive affect was associated with elevated depression, r = .326, p < .0001, and anxiety symptoms, r = .368, p < .0001. Thus, there is evidence that depression and anxiety symptoms are not associated with reduced variability in affect.

Affect was centered within person to clarify interpretation of cross-level moderation. However, the zero point for depression and anxiety is interpretable and theoretically meaningful. For example, a value of zero indicates the absence of symptoms. Therefore, the scores for depression and anxiety symptoms were not centered.

Results

Model Development

An initial model was fit as event nested within day within person with an autoregressive 1 function on the variance-covariance matrix of events. A second model imposed a constraint of exchangeability across days, which produced worsened model fit for agreeable, Δχ2 (1) = 6.27, p = .012, and quarrelsome behavior, Δχ2 (1) = 4.76, p = .029. The third model constrained the autoregressive 1 correlation to zero, which produced worsened model fit for agreeable, Δχ2 (1) = 12.23, p < 0.0001, but not quarrelsome behavior, Δχ2 (1) = 0.01, p = 0.905. The final best fitting model included event nested within day nested within person with an autoregressive covariance structure for agreeable but not quarrelsome behavior. Analyses were rerun excluding the autoregressive covariance structure for agreeable behavior and adding it for quarrelsome behavior; findings did not substantively change.

Affect

Results for the relation of affect and behavior were as expected, Elevated event-level negative affect was associated with decreased agreeable behavior, B = -.104, p < .0001, 95% CI: -.112, -.096, and increased quarrelsome behavior, B = .092, p < .0001, 95% CI: .084, .100 (see Table 2). Elevated event-level positive affect was associated with increased agreeable behavior, B = .082, p < .0001, 95% CI: .078, .087, and decreased quarrelsome behavior, B = -.053, p < .0001, 95% CI: -.057, -.049. Comparison of confidence intervals suggests that communal behaviors are more strongly associated with negative affect than positive affect. There were significant random slopes for the association of negative and positive affect with agreeable and quarrelsome behavior (see Table 2).

Table 2.

Event-level association of behavior and affect moderated by depression and anxiety symptom severity
Step 1 Step 2
Outcome Term B / Estimate CI B / Estimate CI
Agreeable intercept 0.174 * (0.165, 0.184) 0.185 * (0.170, 0.200)
Behavior NA -0.104 * (-0.112, -0.096) -0.127 * (-0.140, -0.115)
Depression -- -- -0.001 (-0.003, 0.001)
Anxiety -- -- -0.001 (-0.003, 0.001)
NA X Depression -- -- 0.002 * (0.001, 0.004)
NA X Anxiety -- -- 0.0002 (-0.001, 0.002)
σintercept 0.063 * (0.056, 0.071) 0.063 * (0.056, 0.070)
σNA 0.040 * (0.033, 0.049) 0.036 * (0.028, 0.045)
intercept 0.174 * (0.165, 0.184) 0.185 * (0.170, 0.200)
PA 0.082 * (0.078, 0.087) 0.090 * (0.083, 0.097)
Depression -- -- -0.001 (-0.003, 0.001)
Anxiety -- -- -0.001 (-0.003, 0.002)
PA X Depression -- -- -0.001 * (-0.002, -0.00002)
PA X Anxiety -- -- -0.0001 (-0.001, 0.001)
σintercept 0.064 * (0.057, 0.072) 0.063 * (0.056, 0.071)
σPA 0.023 * (0.019, 0.028) 0.022 * (0.018, 0.027)
Quarrelsome intercept -0.201 * (-0.210, -0.193) -0.210 * (-0.223, -0.196)
Behavior NA 0.092 * (0.084, 0.101) 0.108 * (0.094, 0.122)
Depression -- -- 0.0001 (-0.001, 0.002)
Anxiety -- -- 0.001 (-0.0005, 0.003)
NA X Depression -- -- -0.002 * (-0.003, -0.0004)
NA X Anxiety -- -- 0.0001 (-0.002, 0.002)
σintercept 0.058 * (0.051, 0.064) 0.057 * (0.051, 0.064)
σNA 0.048 * (0.041, 0.057) 0.046 * (0.039, 0.055)
intercept -0.201 * (-0.210, -0.192) -0.209 * (-0.223, -0.196)
PA -0.053 * (-0.057, -0.049) -0.055 * (-0.062, -0.049)
Depression -- -- 0.0001 (-0.001, 0.002)
Anxiety -- -- 0.001 (-0.001, 0.003)
PA X Depression -- -- 0.0003 (-0.0004, 0.001)
PA X Anxiety -- -- -0.0001 (-0.001, 0.001)
σintercept 0.058 * (0.051, 0.065) 0.057 * (0.051, 0.064)
σPA 0.023 * (0.019, 0.027) 0.022 * (0.019, 0.027)
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Note.

*

p< .05.

NA refers to negative affect. PA refers to positive affect. σintercept refers to the standard deviation of the random effect for intercept over persons. σNA and σPA refer to the standard deviation of the random effect for negative affect (NA) and positive affect (PA) over persons. Estimates of additional variance components are available from the authors upon request.

Depression Symptoms as Moderator

Results were generally consistent with hypotheses (see Table 2). Depression symptoms attenuated the association of negative affect with agreeable behavior (see Figure 1A), B = .002, p = .0003, 95% CI: .001, .004 and quarrelsome behavior, B = -.002, p = .013, 95% CI: -.003, -.0004 (see Figure 1B). Elevated depression symptoms also attenuated the association of positive affect with agreeable behavior, B = -.001, p = .046, 95% CI: -.002, -.00002 (see Figure 1C). Unexpectedly, depression symptoms did not moderate the association of positive affect with quarrelsome behavior, B = .0003, p = .380, 95% CI: -.0004, .001. These results indicate that elevated depression symptoms attenuated the association between affect and behavior with a stronger pattern of relations for negative affect than positive affect. Follow-up analyses probed the moderation effects by evaluating marginal effects for the association between affect and communal behavior at the average depression symptom severity, two standard deviations above the average, and zero. An association between affect and communal behavior remained at each severity level (see Table 3) despite decreasing from the 0 symptom level to the mean symptom level to the severest level estimated (+2 SD).

Table 3.

Marginal event-level association of behavior and affect for levels of depression symptom severity

Outcome Affect Depression Symptom Severity Term B CI
Agreeable Behavior Negative 0 Intercept 0.187 * (0.171, 0.202)
Slope -0.129 * (-0.142, -0.116)
Mean Intercept 0.178 * (0.163, 0.193)
Slope -0.109 * (-0.121, -0.097)
+2 SD Intercept 0.162 * (0.128, 0.196)
Slope -0.074 * (-0.100, -0.048)
Positive 0 Intercept 0.186 * (0.171, 0.201)
Slope 0.084 * (0.079, 0.090)
Mean Intercept 0.177 * (0.161, 0.192)
Slope 0.079 * (0.074, 0.085)
+2 SD Intercept 0.161 * (0.126, 0.195)
Slope 0.070 * (0.058, 0.082)
Quarrelsome Behavior Negative 0 Intercept -0.212 * (-0.225, -0.198)
Slope 0.110 * (0.095, 0.124)
Mean Intercept -0.209 * (-0.223, -0.196)
Slope 0.095 * (0.081, 0.108)
+2 SD Intercept -0.205 * (-0.236, -0.175)
Slope 0.068 * (0.040, 0.097)
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Note.

*

p< .05.

No interactions were found between anxiety symptom severity and negative affect nor between anxiety symptom severity and positive affect. Inclusion of anxiety symptoms as a main effect and cross-level interaction did not reduce the moderating effect of depression symptoms.

Supplementary Analyses: Agentic Behavior

Supplementary analyses were run to examine whether the moderating role of depression symptoms is specific to communal behavior. Model development progressed for dominant and submissive behavior as previously described. For dominant behavior, 94.36% of variance was explained at the event level, 0.41% at the day level, and 5.23% at the person level. For submissive behavior, 92.27% of the variance was explained at the event level, .96% at the day level, and 6.77% at the person level.

Positive affect was associated with decreased dominant behavior, B = -.007, p = < .0001, 95% CI: -.010, -.004, and decreased submissive behavior, B = -.021, p < .0001, 95% CI: -.025, -.017. Negative affect was associated with increased submissive behavior, B = .010, p = .006, 95% CI: .003, .016, but not with dominant behavior, B = .003, p = .381, 95% CI: -.003, .010. Comparison of confidence intervals suggests that positive affect was more strongly associated with agentic behaviors than negative affect.

When depression and anxiety symptoms were added as main effects and cross-level interaction terms with positive and negative affect, neither depression nor anxiety symptoms moderated the association of negative or positive affect with dominant or submissive behavior.

Discussion

As expected, event-level positive and negative affect were associated with both agreeable and quarrelsome behavior; both communal behaviors were more strongly associated with negative affect than positive affect. Negative affect was associated with decreased agreeable and increased quarrelsome behavior whereas positive affect was associated with increased agreeable and decreased quarrelsome behavior. There was substantial between-person heterogeneity in the association of positive and negative affect with communal behaviors, which was moderated by depression symptom severity. Persons with elevated symptoms of depression had an attenuated association of negative affect with agreeable and quarrelsome behaviors and of positive affect with agreeable behavior. Depression was unique in attenuating the association of affect and communal behavior; concurrent anxiety symptoms did not attenuate the association of affect and communal behavior nor did including concurrent anxiety symptoms reduce the attenuating effect of depression symptoms. Moreover, no attenuation was found for the association of affect and agentic behavior. Whereas positive affect was associated with decreased agentic (i.e., dominant and submissive) behavior, neither depression nor anxiety symptoms moderated the association of affect with agentic behavior.

These results are consistent with a model in which interpersonal behavior, particularly communal behavior, responds to emotional cues wherein changes in interpersonal behavior indicate a response to changes in emotion. Negative affect may serve as a stronger cue to drive changes in communal behavior whereas positive affect may serve as a stronger cue to drive changes in agentic behavior. These results replicate prior research regarding agreeable, quarrelsome, and submissive behavior (Côté & Moskowitz, 1998; Moskowitz & Côté, 1995). Moreover, comparison of confidence intervals suggests that depression showed a stronger moderation effect for negative affect than positive affect. If positive affect serves as a stronger cue for agentic behavior than negative affect, this may explain the lack of moderation for the association of negative affect with agentic behavior.

The present study further extends prior work indicating that generalized distress and depression moderate responsivity of communal behavior to social cues. Zuroff and colleagues (2007) demonstrated that elevated depression symptoms were associated with a weaker association between the partner’s communal behavior and the person’s own communal behavior. Tracey demonstrated an association between behavioral rigidity, that is decreased responsivity in response to the behavior of another person, and distress (Tracey, 2004, 2005; Tracey & Rohlfing, 2010). However, these prior lines of research have not addressed the association of interpersonal behavior with affect. The present study extends prior work by demonstrating that elevated depression symptoms are associated with decreased responsivity to negative affect. Taken together, elevated depression symptoms seem to be associated with hypo-reactivity to socioemotional cues with respect to communal behavior. This is consistent with an emotion regulation framework, wherein depression is associated with impairment reacting to socioemotional information, specifically regarding communal behavior.

Individuals with elevated depression symptoms may have difficulty modulating their communal behaviors in response to event-level negative and positive affect. This is consistent with prior evidence of emotion regulation deficits in depression associated with a lower frequency of employing emotion regulatory behavior (Berking et al., 2014; Radkovsky et al., 2014). The present study clarifies that individuals with elevated depression symptoms may specifically have difficulty using emotional information to indicate the need for emotion regulatory behavior, particularly as it relates to changes in communal behavior. Additionally, prior research (e.g., Berking et al., 2014) frequently employs either laboratory-based assessment of emotion regulation or participant self-report on a single occasion. While this work had yielded important insights into the structure of emotion and an association with psychopathology, the intensive repeated measures approach employed in the present study extends this work to understanding emotion regulation as it unfolds in situ (i.e. in daily life). Further research is needed to understand the association of common emotion regulatory measures and tasks (e.g., the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale; Gratz & Roemer, 2004) with affect as assessed in situ by ecological momentary assessment or event-contingent recording.

The diminished capacity to adapt behavior in response to socioemotional information suggests a form of interpersonal behavioral rigidity, which is associated with interpersonal problems (e.g., Tracey, 2005). This may suggest a mechanism by which depression is associated with elevated risk for interpersonal problems particularly in relation to evidence that depression may be associated with elevated global quarrelsome behavior (Rappaport et al., 2014). Whereas elevated depression symptom severity is associated with greater overall quarrelsome behavior, it may also be associated with decreased reactivity of quarrelsome behavior to negative affect. Therefore, depression may be associated with the generation of interpersonal problems not only via overall elevated quarrelsome behavior, but also through greater rigidity of behavior in response to affective cues.

While prior research has demonstrated that anxiety and depression are associated with elevated overall quarrelsome behavior (e.g., Rappaport et al., 2014), the present study indicates that this emotion regulation deficit may be specific to depression. Concurrent anxiety symptoms did not moderate the association of behavior and affect, and the association with depression was robust to adjusting for concurrent anxiety symptoms. Previous research on behavioral rigidity in depression (e.g., Zuroff et al., 2007) and related emotion regulatory deficits (e.g., Berking et al., 2014) examined only depression symptoms. Thus, the present study extends past work in examining the specificity of this emotion regulatory deficit to depression. Given high rates of comorbidity between depression and anxiety (Mineka, Watson, & Clark, 1998), evaluation of anxiety symptoms provides a particularly stringent test of specificity.

Limitations

The present study was conducted with a community sample to examine the moderating role of depression on the association of affect with interpersonal behavior for syndromal and subsyndromal levels of depression symptoms. Two restrictions warrant evaluating this association in a clinically diagnosed sample. The behaviors used were developed to reflect behaviors engaged in by community adults. It is possible that rarer behaviors, such as verbally abusive language, not measured here are manifested in clinical samples. Similarly, it is possible that the association between negative affect and interpersonal behavior manifests differently for more severe levels of affective disorders. However, the social behavior inventory and the affect measure used in the present sample have previously been used in clinical samples, specifically individuals with diagnosed borderline personality disorder (Russell, Moskowitz, Zuroff, Sookman, & Paris, 2007) and social anxiety disorder (Russell et al., 2011), suggesting that the measures are sensitive to characterizing the interpersonal behavior of individuals with psychopathology. Still, replication of the present study is warranted with individuals diagnosed with a depressive disorder.

The present study modeled affect as a cue that indicates the need to modulate one’s behavior. In this manner, the present study sought to identify a manifestation of a potentially important emotion regulatory deficits in depression within a community sample. Further research is needed to examine the temporal ordering of the association between affect and interpersonal behavior.

Finally, there is conceptual overlap between depression, anxiety, and affect. This is evident in the correlation of depression and anxiety with elevated mean negative and positive affect. In the present study, affect was measured on a different time scale (i.e., with respect to specific events) and represents temporal variation in affect within an individual whereas depression and anxiety were assessed as referring to inter-individual differences. As such, depression and anxiety were measured only at baseline. Thus, affect can be differentiated methodologically from depression and anxiety.

Future Directions

The present study demonstrated that individuals with elevated depression symptoms show a diminished capacity to regulate communal behavior in response to emotional information. Previous work suggests that general distress and depression symptoms are associated with attenuation of reactivity to other socioemotional information, specifically the communal behavior of the other person in an interpersonal interaction. Future research would benefit from examining other manifestations of reactivity to socioemotional information, such as physiological reactivity to affect cues, which may lead to diminished behavioral reactivity.

Further research is needed to establish the interpersonal consequences of failing to adapt one’s interpersonal behavior to affective cues. Prior research has indicated that a restricted range of interpersonal behavior is associated with a variety of problematic phenomena such as rigidity in cognitively integrating social and emotional information (Dekeyser, Raes, Leijssen, Leysen, & Dewulf, 2008). Within the interpersonal domain, elevated behavioral rigidity has been associated with lower well-being (O’Connor & Dyce, 1997; Paulhus & Martin, 1988). However, further research is needed to examine the interpersonal consequences of attenuated response of communal behavior to socioemotional cues. For example, while past research has demonstrated the association of depression with diminished social support (e.g. Cohen & Wills, 1985), future research may examine whether this is the result of a diminished ability to solicit social support from one’s social network (e.g. Hokanson, Rubert, Welker, Hollander, & Hedeen, 1989). This work would benefit from examining the importance of the modulation of communal behavior as compared with agentic behavior. For example, research may explore the importance of communal behavior to maintaining interpersonal relationships and securing social support.

Practice Implications

The present study adds to prior work demonstrating that while depression and anxiety symptoms are often highly comorbid, they are associated with unique interpersonal behavioral patterns. This has implications for clinical practice where many patients present with interpersonal problems related to psychological distress and symptomatology (Horowitz & Vitkus, 1986). For example, individuals with elevated depression symptoms are at increased risk for interpersonal problems which, subsequently, generate stress and worsened symptomatology (Hammen, 1991). For an individual who reports high levels of interpersonal conflicts, current assessment emphasizes mean behavioral tendencies (e.g., elevated overall quarrelsomeness or submissiveness). The present study suggests that it may be desirable to also assess the individual’s ability to adapt to socioemotional and situational cues.

Additionally, the present study suggests a specific emotion regulatory deficit among individuals with depression symptoms which may manifest in problematic interpersonal behavior patterns. Such individuals may have difficulty using emotional information to cue adjustments in interpersonal behavior. This indicates that remediation of impairments related to emotion regulatory deficits, such as through the addition of emotion-regulation-based treatments, may be a useful adjunct to treatments for depression (e.g., Campbell-Sills & Barlow, 2007; Mennin & Fresco, 2014). Moreover, through addressing behavioral rigidity, such treatments may additionally address interpersonal relationships and problems.

Conclusion

While negative and positive affect are generally associated with modulation of interpersonal behavior, particularly communal behavior, this association is weaker among individuals with elevated depression symptoms. It may be that individuals with depression have difficulty modifying behaviors to downregulate negative affect or upregulate positive affect. This suggests a specific emotion-regulatory deficit among depressed individuals, which may contribute to the protraction of negative affect and present a mechanism for the generation of interpersonal problems.

Public Significance Statement.

The present study demonstrates that interpersonal behavior is associated with people’s current affect. However, people who have elevated depression symptoms have weaker associations between behavior and affect, suggesting one way they may have difficulty regulating their affect.

Acknowledgments

This study was supported by grants awarded to Dr. D’Antono by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR; MOP #79456), the Fondation de l’Institut de Cardiologie de Montréal (FICM), and the Fonds de la Recherche en Santé du Québec (FRSQ). Salary support was provided to Dr. Rappaport by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH: T32MH020030). We thank Kristopher Preacher for comments during the development of this work.

Footnotes

Ideas in this manuscript were presented in a talk presented at the annual meeting for the Association of Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies in Nashville, TN in November 2013. The presentation, including presentation slides, was not posted on a website or shared online nor does this association publish conference abstracts.

Contributor Information

Lance M. Rappaport, Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics, Virginia Commonwealth University and Department of Psychology, McGill University

D.S. Moskowitz, Department of Psychology, McGill University

Bianca D’Antono, Montreal Heart Institute and Department of Psychology, Université de Montréal.

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