Differentiating negative emotions in ourselves and others: associations with internalising symptoms and social functioning

Negative emotion differentiation (NED), or the ability to precisely describe negative emotional states, is linked to positive individual and interpersonal outcomes. Although NED has typically been defined as understanding one’s own emotional states (intrapersonal NED), precisely describing how others are feeling may likewise facilitate social functioning and mental health. However, no validated lab measures exist to assess how precisely one labels others’ discrete negative emotions (interpersonal NED). Across four online studies, participants completed a novel task rating another person's emotions in videos. Interpersonal NED was computed using intraclass correlation coefficients (consistent with intrapersonal NED conventions). Participants completed self-report questionnaires assessing mental health and social functioning and, in Studies 1 and 2, completed an intrapersonal NED task. Intrapersonal and interpersonal NED were consistently correlated with each other. Contrary to hypotheses, associations between interpersonal NED and either mental health or interpersonal outcomes were weak and inconsistent across studies, except for perceived social support, which demonstrated a positive aggregated association with interpersonal NED meta-analyzed across studies. Unexpectedly, intrapersonal NED was also unassociated with outcomes of interest across studies. Although results were not as anticipated, our rigorous, pre-registered measurement approach lays the groundwork for future research to develop methods for assessing interpersonal NED.