Background
Dr. Klein was awarded a T-32 NIH postdoctoral fellowship to study dysregulated emotion as a shared risk factor contributing to multiple mental health disorders simultaneously. In his postdoctoral work thus far, he initially published work demonstrating that both behavioral emotion reacitivty1 and pathological levels of negative emotion2 were associated with substance experimentation as early as in childhood (M age = 9.9). Next, in a large dataset of low SES youth, Dr. Klein showed that a relative inability to regulate one’s emotions prospectively predicted the development of clinical anxiety, depression and substance use up to 7 years later3. A key area of his current research is examining links between specific emotion generation processes and different forms of psychopathology. This work extends Dr. Klein's dissertation research into clinical domains. Dr. Klein recently received priority funding status for an NIH pilot grant comparing and contrasting three emotion generation processes (individual differences in negative emotion reaction thresholds, emotion reaction intensity, and reaction duration) as predictors of both affective and substance abuse disorders. This work was designed to provide insight into the core emotion reactivity processes underlying mental ill-health, and ultimately to provide specific targets for broadly effective psychological health interventions.
Publications and Articles Under Review
1. Klein, R. J., Gyorda, J. A., & Jacobson, N. C. (in press). Anxiety, Depressive Disorders, and Substance Experimentation in Childhood. PLOS ONE
2. Klein, R. J., Gyorda, J. A., Damien, & Jacobson, N. C. (2021). Dysregulated Emotion and Substance Experimentation in Childhood: Insights from a Large Nationally Representative Cohort Study RG Preprint. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.28496.23048
3. Klein, R. J., Nguyen, N., Gyorda, J. A., & Jacobson, N. C. (in press). Adolescent Emotion Regulation and Future Psychopathology: A Transdiagnostic Latent Growth Analysis. Journal of Research in Adolescence
Background
Dr. Klein's interest in emotional reactivity and psychological flexibility (PF) emerged in part through his early research showing links between adaptive functioning and a tendency to flexibly react to changing environments. These ideas lead to a key and fundamental disagreement in the existing scientific literature concerning the relationship between psychological health (e.g., neuroticism, subjective well-being) and emotional reactivity. Specifically, a majority of emotion researchers have suggested that overly intense emotional reactions (especially to stressors) are a key mechanism that drives mental health problems (e.g., neuroticism, unhappiness, anxiety). A second (smaller) literature has suggested an opposing pattern, where blunted but elongated emotion reactions are viewed as key indicators of mental health problems. Consistent with PF theory, this research suggests that healthy emotion generation systems should flexibly respond (e.g., react) when stressors are present, but also deactivate (i.e., shorten) after stressors conclude. Importantly, Dr. Klein views these divergent findings as originating from key limitations in the existing emotion reactivity measurement approaches; specifically these approaches' inability to differentiate between emotion reaction thresholds, emotion reaction intensities, and reaction duration processes. If these processes are not isolated and differentiated, what appear to be “extreme” negative emotion reactions seen in previous research could actually represent elongated reactions, or overreactions to low-level stimuli. These concepts are described in greater detail in Klein, Jacobson, and Robinson (2021).
For Dr. Klein, the solution to capturing these distinct processes was to measure emotion-related reactivity processes from start to finish with high temporal resolution. In an early paradigm of this type, he showed that greater neuroticism was predictive of elongated (rather than more intense) behavioral stress reactivity3. For his dissertation, Dr. Klein built on this work by developing the Dynamic Affective Reactivity Task (DART)4,5. The DART was designed to isolate emotion reaction intensities within continuous streams of affect and relate individual differences in these intensities to key well-being indicators. Using the DART’s continuous assessment approach, Dr. Klein showed that 1) more intense/responsive emotional reactions were actually associated with enhanced well-being, and 2) a plausible mechanism supporting this link was that intense emotional reactions were linked to more flexible, situation-congruent approach/avoidance behavior6. This is a promising line of research that should impact both theoretical conceptions of the origins of human mental health and well-being (e.g., psychological flexibility theory), as well as applied research domains which rely on a precise understanding of the specific emotion reactivity processes that underlie neuroticism or emotion-based disorders like depression and anxiety.
Publications and Articles Under Review
1. Klein, R. J., Liu, T., Diehl, D., & Robinson, M. D. (2017). The personality-related implications of cognitive performance: Stress-contingent self-control in daily life. Journal of Research in Personality, 70, 156-165
2. Klein, R. J., & Robinson, M. D. (2019). Neuroticism as mental noise: Evidence from a continuous tracking task. Journal of Personality, 2, 1-13.
3. Klein, R. J., Towers, C., & Robinson, M. D. (2019). Emotion-related variations in motor tremor: Magnitude, time course, links to emotional temperament. Emotion, 5, 24-38.
4. Klein, R. J., Rapaport, R., Gyorda, J. A., Jacobson, N. C., & Robinson, M. D. (2021). Second-to-second changes in affect predict daily affective reactivity, variability, and instability: Bridging lab studies with daily life. RG Preprint. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.17673.98401
5. Robinson, M. D., Irvin, R. L., & Klein, R. J. (in press). Dynamic negativity effects in emotional responding: Onsets, peaks, and influences from repetition. Emotion.
6. Klein, R. J., Jacobson, N. C., & Robinson, M. D. (in press). A Psychological Flexibility Perspective on Well-Being: Emotional Reactivity, Adaptive Choices, and Daily Experiences. Emotion . Preprint DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.17722.11203
Background
In psychological and philosophical theory spanning thousands of years, a flexible and accepting attitude toward life’s unpleasant aspects (such as experiencing intense sadness or anxiety) has been repeatedly emphasized as supporting psychological health. For instance, Eastern philosophers suggest that attachment to the experiences one desires is the central mechanism that drives human suffering. Relatedly, Carl Jung believed that an “unwillingness to experience legitimate suffering” was the root of all mental illness. Carried by the “third wave” of psychotherapies, acceptance-related attitudes have become an important emphasis in modern mental health treatment. Acceptance-related attitudes are also thought to be a key mechanism through which PF promotes psychological health. Such links are also quite consistent with the previously discussed research given that accepting attitudes have been specifically associated with decreased duration of emotional reactions. Decreased emotion reaction durations have also been repeatedly associated with increased psychological health. In the acceptance literature, Dr. Klein has focused on the construct of “nonattachment” because it encompasses acceptance of all forms of internal and external events, as well as both the experience of the unwanted and the non-experience of the wanted. In Dr. Klein's early nonattachment research, he emphasized the independence of nonattachment and trait mindfulness by showing that nonattachment is predicative of stress resilience and psychology flexibility above and beyond its association with mindful awareness1.
In the intervention domain, existing interventions designed to increase nonattachment-related constructs (e.g., acceptance, distress-tolerance) have focused on a narrow set of behavioral meditation and exposure-based practices. To add to and expand this work, Dr. Klein piloted a cognitive intervention that teaches a 2500-year old teaching called the “Three Marks of Existence”. This teaching is a core intervention across Eastern philosophies. The teaching explains three fundamental life truths that, when understood, are thought to increase nonattachment. For example, the third "mark" reminds subjects that one’s personal emotion experiences are constantly changing in ways that one cannot fully control. Dr. Klein showed that a placebo-controlled 12-minute Three Marks training emphasizing nonattachment toward the experience of negative emotions and nonattached towards negative evaluations of the self by others 1) increased nonattachment/acceptance levels toward unwanted experiences, 2) reduced threat appraisals of an impending public speaking task, and 3) did not decrease peak emotional reactivity, but shortened the duration of negative emotional repsonses2. Dr. Klein also currently has an active grant application at the American Psychological Foundation focusing on the development of an accessible nonattachment intervention that can be delivered digitally at low-cost.
Publications and Articles Under Review
1. Klein, R. J., & Robinson, M. D. (2019). Mindfulness, Nonattachment, and the Feeling-Action Relationship. Mindfulness, 10, 2121-2132
2. Klein, R. J., & Robinson, M. D. (2022). Cognitive foundations of affective dynamics: Accepting attitudes predict shorter emotion reactions to controlled stimuli. RG Preprint DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.17673.98401