Department of Psychology, University of Toronto.
Department of Psychology, University of California, Berkeley.
J Pers Soc Psychol. 2018 Dec;115(6):1075-1092. doi: 10.1037/pspp0000157. Epub 2017 Jul 13.
Individuals differ in the degree to which they tend to habitually accept their emotions and thoughts without judging them-a process here referred to as habitual acceptance. Acceptance has been linked with greater psychological health, which we propose may be due to the role acceptance plays in negative emotional responses to stressors: acceptance helps keep individuals from reacting to-and thus exacerbating-their negative mental experiences. Over time, experiencing lower negative emotion should promote psychological health. To test these hypotheses, Study 1 (N = 1,003) verified that habitually accepting mental experiences broadly predicted psychological health (psychological well-being, life satisfaction, and depressive and anxiety symptoms), even when controlling for potentially related constructs (reappraisal, rumination, and other mindfulness facets including observing, describing, acting with awareness, and nonreactivity). Next, in a laboratory study (Study 2, N = 156), habitual acceptance predicted lower negative (but not positive) emotional responses to a standardized stressor. Finally, in a longitudinal design (Study 3, N = 222), acceptance predicted lower negative (but not positive) emotion experienced during daily stressors that, in turn, accounted for the link between acceptance and psychological health 6 months later. This link between acceptance and psychological health was unique to accepting mental experiences and was not observed for accepting situations. Additionally, we ruled out potential confounding effects of gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and life stress severity. Overall, these results suggest that individuals who accept rather than judge their mental experiences may attain better psychological health, in part because acceptance helps them experience less negative emotion in response to stressors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).
个体在习惯性地接受自己的情绪和想法而不评判它们的程度上存在差异——这一过程在这里被称为习惯性接受。接受与更好的心理健康有关，我们提出，这可能是因为接受在应对压力源产生的负面情绪反应方面的作用：接受有助于个体避免对负面心理体验做出反应——从而加剧这些体验。随着时间的推移，体验到更低的负面情绪应该会促进心理健康。为了检验这些假设，研究 1（N=1003）验证了习惯性地接受心理体验广泛地预测了心理健康（心理幸福感、生活满意度以及抑郁和焦虑症状），即使在控制了潜在相关的结构（再评价、反刍和其他正念方面，包括观察、描述、有意识地行动和不反应）。接下来，在一项实验室研究（研究 2，N=156）中，习惯性接受预测了对标准化压力源的负面（但不是积极）情绪反应较低。最后，在一项纵向设计（研究 3，N=222）中，接受预测了在日常压力源期间体验到的较低的负面（但不是积极）情绪，而这种情绪反过来又解释了接受与心理健康之间 6 个月后的联系。这种接受与心理健康之间的联系是接受心理体验所特有的，而不是接受情况所特有的。此外，我们排除了性别、种族、社会经济地位和生活压力严重程度等潜在的混杂效应。总体而言，这些结果表明，那些接受而不是评判自己心理体验的个体可能会获得更好的心理健康，部分原因是接受帮助他们在应对压力源时体验到更少的负面情绪。（PsycINFO 数据库记录（c）2018 APA，保留所有权利）。
