Associations Between Emodiversity and Mental Health in University Students During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Emodiversity refers to the breadth and scope of emotions a person experiences day to day and may be uniquely related to mental health mean levels of positive and negative emotion. We examined the associations between positive and negative emodiversity, mean positive and negative emotion, and three mental health indicators: depressive symptoms, anxious symptoms, and overall wellbeing in a sample of undergraduate students (N = 592, 80% women, mode of age = 20 years) during different phases of lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic. Participants completed a 14-day daily diary survey to assess their daily positive and negative emotions. Results indicated significant interactions between negative emodiversity and mean levels of negative mood in predicting symptoms of depression and anxiety and overall wellbeing. Specifically, for individuals who reported greater mean levels of negative mood, low negative emodiversity was associated with greater depressive and anxious symptoms and lower wellbeing. Results for positive emodiversity were not significant. These associations did not differ across changing pandemic restrictions. Results suggest that rigidity in negative emotions in daily life (i.e., high levels of negative emotion with low diversity in negative emotion states) are an important feature of mental health and wellbeing among university students.