Journal of Personality and Social Psychology © 2017 American Psychological Association 2018, Vol. 115, No. 6, 1075–1092 0022-3514/18/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000157 PERSONALITY PROCESSES AND INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES The Psychological Health Benefits of Accepting Negative Emotions and Thoughts: Laboratory, Diary, and Longitudinal Evidence Brett Q. Ford Phoebe Lam, Oliver P. John, and Iris B. Mauss University of Toronto University of California, Berkeley 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 ϭ 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 ϭ 156), habitual acceptance predicted lower negative (but not positive) emotional responses to a standardized stressor. Finally, in a longitudinal design (Study 3, N ϭ 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 psycho- logical 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. Keywords: acceptance, negative emotion, stressors, psychological health Supplemental materials: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000157.supp People commonly experience negative emotions and thoughts those experiences has great power to shape individuals’ day-to-day but approach those negative mental experiences in different ways. lives, with possible cumulative effects on longer-term outcomes. On one hand, people can judge these emotions and thoughts as Although research has suggested that it is generally beneficial to unacceptable or “bad,” struggle with those experiences, and strive accept (vs. judge) mental experiences, key questions remain re- to alter them. On the other hand, people can accept their emotions garding the mechanisms of these benefits, as well as the scope of and thoughts and acknowledge them as a natural occurrence. The these benefits (how broadly does acceptance benefit different tendency to accept (vs. judge) one’s mental experiences represents facets of psychological health?), their generalizability (how do the a fundamental individual difference that should have important benefits of acceptance apply across diverse individuals?), and their implications for downstream outcomes: Because negative emo- specificity (how can alternative explanations for the benefits of This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers. tions and thoughts are very common, the way individuals approach acceptance be ruled out?). This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly. We propose that individuals who tend to accept their mental experiences may attain greater psychological health because ac- This article was published Online First July 13, 2017. ceptance helps them experience less negative emotion in response Brett Q. Ford, Department of Psychology, University of Toronto; to stressors. At first glance, it may seem paradoxical that individ- Phoebe Lam, Oliver P. John, and Iris B. Mauss, Department of Psychology, uals who accept their negative mental experiences should feel less University of California, Berkeley. negative emotion. However, both theory and preliminary findings Brett Q. Ford and Phoebe Lam contributed equally to this work. Preparation suggest that acceptance involves helping individuals not react to of this article was supported by National Institutes of Health Grants awarded their own emotions and thoughts, which in turn helps attenuate to Iris B. Mauss (AG031967 and AG043592). An early version of the present manuscript’s results was presented as a poster at the Emotion Preconference of those mental experiences and allow them to diffuse more quickly the Society for Personality and Social Psychology conference in 2016. (Campbell-Sills, Barlow, Brown, & Hofmann, 2006; Singer & Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Brett Q. Dobson, 2007). As people who habitually accept their mental Ford, Department of Psychology, University of Toronto, 1265 Military experiences repeatedly experience less negative emotion, their Trail, Toronto, ON, M1C 1A5 Canada. E-mail: [email protected] psychological health should improve. 1075 1076 FORD, LAM, JOHN, AND MAUSS Although there has been some theorizing regarding the mecha- mental experiences, which can backfire (Masedo & Esteve, 2007; nisms by which habitually accepting emotions and thoughts pro- Wegner, Schneider, Carter, & White, 1987), and less likely to motes psychological health (Baer, 2003; Campbell-Sills et al., experience negative meta-emotional reactions such as feeling 2006; Rau & Williams, 2016), little empirical research has directly guilty about feeling angry (Mitmansgruber, Beck, Höfer, & tested these mechanisms. In the present investigation, we tested the Schüßler, 2009). Thus, when people accept (vs. judge) their mental proposed mechanism—less negative emotion—using a daily diary experiences, those experiences run their natural—and relatively and longitudinal design, after first establishing the basic links short-lived—course, rather than being exacerbated (Simons & between acceptance, emotional responses to stressors, and psycho- Gaher, 2005). As a consequence, acceptance should promote over- logical health. all lower levels of negative emotion (Campbell-Sills et al., 2006; Singer & Dobson, 2007). Habitual Acceptance and Psychological Health Laboratory research has begun to provide support for this idea. Individuals who habitually accept their mental experiences more Research has consistently linked the habitual tendency to accept (vs. less), and who were then exposed to a negative emotion one’s mental experiences with greater psychological health (Baer, induction, experienced lower levels of negative emotion. This Smith, & Allen, 2004; Baer et al., 2008; Cardaciotto, Herbert, pattern has been observed in the context of completing a physio- Forman, Moitra, & Farrow, 2008; Hayes et al., 2004; Kohls, Sauer, logically stressful carbon dioxide challenge task (Feldner, Zvolen- & Walach, 2009). This research has typically demonstrated links sky, Eifert, & Spira, 2003; Karekla, Forsyth, & Kelly, 2004), between acceptance and clinically relevant outcomes, such as working on a frustrating image-tracing task (Feldman, Lavalle, fewer mood disorder and anxiety symptoms (see Aldao, Nolen- Gildawie, & Greeson, 2016), watching negative film clips (Liver- Hoeksema, & Schweizer, 2010, for meta-analysis). Research on ant, Brown, Barlow, & Roemer, 2008; Shallcross, Troy, Boland, & acceptance has often focused on clinical samples (Eisenlohr-Moul, Mauss, 2010), and viewing negative images (Ostafin, Brooks, & Peters, & Baer, 2015), but links between habitual acceptance and Laitem, 2014). Other studies have provided causal evidence, find- greater psychological health have been demonstrated within non- ing that participants who were asked to engage in acceptance (vs. clinical samples as well (Baer et al., 2004). Furthermore, the comparison conditions) during a negative emotion induction ex- benefits of acceptance appear to be unique, having been differen- perienced less negative emotion (Campbell-Sills et al., 2006; tiated from related constructs. For example, while acceptance has Dunn, Billotti, Murphy, & Dalgleish, 2009; Feldner et al., 2003; often been considered as part of the larger construct of mindfulness Huffziger & Kuehner, 2009; Kuehner, Huffziger, & Liebsch, (Kohls et al., 2009; Vujanovic, Youngwirth, Johnson, & Zvolen- 2009; Levitt, Brown, Orsillo, & Barlow, 2004; Wolgast, Lundh, & sky, 2009), it has been shown to be its own independent factor Viborg, 2011). (Baer, Smith, Hopkins, Krietemeyer, & Toney, 2006), and recent Building upon these laboratory findings, one study found that research suggests that acceptance makes unique contributions to negative emotional responses to stressors may play a role in the psychological health, above and beyond other elements of mind- link between acceptance and psychological health: undergraduate fulness (e.g., observing present-moment experiences, describing internal experiences, acting with awareness, and nonreactivity to students who reported higher habitual acceptance reported less inner experiences;