(PS8-100) The Role of Event Type in Affective Change During an Autobiographical Negative Mood Induction

Abstract Text: Understanding the effects of negative emotional states on behaviors, thoughts, and physiological states is important in informing theories on the development and maintenance of psychopathology, as well as informing effective interventions and promoting well-being. Reliable methods to induce negative emotional states are a tool for conducting quality clinical research that aims to understand these etiological and intervention processes. We explored the utility of a mood induction that combined writing about a particularly upsetting or sad event (e.g., Becker et al., 2016; VanderVeen et al., 2016) while listening to validated negative mood-inducing music (e.g., Cyders et al., 2016) in producing affective changes as a function of the type of event the participant chooses to write about. We recruited 106 adults ages 21-35 (M_age = 24.86, SD = 3.85; 51.9% cisgender women; 73.5% White/non-Hispanic; 15.1% sexual/gender minority) from a university and the surrounding community to a lab session in which they completed background measures and a 10-minute negative mood induction task (e.g., Augur et al., 2023; Wolkowicz et al., 2024). Affective valence and arousal were measured using the Affect Grid at pre- and post-task time points. We transcribed the handwritten accounts of the event and coded the events as a trauma (i.e., DSM-5-TR criterion A traumatic event), death (i.e., sudden/unexpected death of a close friend/family member that did not meet trauma criteria), or stressor (i.e., other stressful events such as loss of relationships, interpersonal conflict, and learning of a serious illness in self/loved one). Mixed-methods ANOVAs with bootstrapping suggested that affective valence significantly decreased from pre- to post-mood induction regardless of the event type (M_pre=6.46, M_pos=4.55), F(1,103)=77.66, p< .001. However, there was a significant time x event-type interaction for affective arousal ratings, F(2,103)=4.99, p=.003. Those who wrote about a trauma (M_pre=3.91, M_post=4.61; p=.009) or a stressor (M_pre=3.91, M_post= 5.26; p< .001) reported significant increases in affective arousal from pre- to post- mood induction, while arousal ratings remained similar across time points for the participants in the sudden/unexpected death group (M_pre=4.24, M_post= .88; p=.41). Thus, there is evidence that this negative mood induction could be useful for inducing more negative affect regardless of whether the participant considers a traumatic event or another stressful event. However, it is possible that the type of event the participant is writing about could impact level of arousal. Thus, clinical researchers may consider altering instructions to specify the type of event to focus on in this task if consistent increases in arousal are important to the research question. Additional research is needed to understand the effect of more nuanced aspects of the event and individual factors could impact the affective responses to written narrative tasks like the present one.