Marije Aan Het Rot

Objectives: Interpersonal functioning has a complex, bidirectional relationship with mental disorders such as anxiety and depression. The Inventory of Interpersonal Problems (IIP) assesses aspects of interpersonal functioning, including general interpersonal distress and interpersonal styles. In this study, we aimed to better understand how these aspects relate to anxiety and depression by (1) comparing interpersonal distress and style in individuals with current, past, and no lifetime anxiety and/or depression, and (2) examining how interpersonal styles relate to the comorbidity and chronicity of anxiety and depression. Methods: Participants ( N = 1800) were drawn from the 9‐year follow‐up of the Netherlands Study of Depression and Anxiety . Diagnostic data from baseline until the 9‐year follow‐up were used to determine diagnoses and chronicity. General interpersonal distress and style were derived from the IIP using the Structural Summary Method. Participants were grouped into four interpersonal style subtypes corresponding to the quadrants of the interpersonal circumplex. Results: Currently diagnosed participants reported higher general interpersonal distress and a more submissive style than those with past and no lifetime anxiety/depression. As predicted, a cold‐submissive style was associated with greater comorbidity and chronicity, also after adjusting for demographics. Conclusions: This study extends prior research on how patients' interpersonal style relates to psychopathology by using longitudinal, transdiagnostic data of individuals across different symptomatic stages. Our findings indicate that a cold‐submissive style is relatively common in more comorbid and chronic anxiety and depressive disorders. This highlights the clinical value of integrating interpersonal assessment into treatment planning.

Objectives: Empathic accuracy (EA) represents a person's ability to correctly infer the emotions of another person. One past study in men found lower EA for positive emotions after a moderate dose of hard liquor compared to after placebo, particularly among non‐hazardous drinkers. The present study aimed to replicate this finding, using a moderate dose of beer and a mixed design. Moreover, we added a novel measure of behavioral empathy. Methods: Participants (62% men) completed the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test, Empathy Quotient, and Revised Drinking Motives Questionnaire. Before and after drinking either beer (6.6% alcohol, n = 28) or its 0.0% equivalent (placebo, n = 38), they watched videoclips of targets talking about emotional autobiographical events and rated how targets felt while talking. Behavioral empathy was assessed by presenting participants with painful scenarios and asking whether they would help the people in pain. Results: The previous finding of lower EA for positive emotions after alcohol was not replicated. Nonetheless, after alcohol non‐hazardous drinkers were less willing to help people in pain. Trait affective empathy (i.e., a person's long‐term disposition to experience emotional responses congruent to another's feelings) and the drinking to cope motive did not significantly moderate the findings. Conclusions: Although alcohol may alter empathy, its effects are not consistent and may depend on the dose and type of alcohol consumed. The moderating roles of trait empathy and trait aggressivity deserves further study.

Despite their wide application, designing Experience Sampling Method (ESM) studies remains challenging partly due to complex and interdependent methodological decisions, such as sampling schedules, response formats, and technological platforms. The existing literature provides valuable frameworks but often mentions methodological options without concrete examples; this article aims to bridge this gap in practical guidance. Informed by the existing ESM literature, we illustrate our decision-making process while designing an ESM study on the temporal associations between momentary life meaning, eating disorder symptoms, and negative affect. While grounded in our specific research questions, this paper provides practical guidelines on how to decide among various methodological options for researchers across psychological fields. We outline key decisions, practical considerations, and challenges encountered during the study’s development. Our paper provides a practical checklist to support researchers in designing ESM studies from scratch and in reporting essential aspects in their manuscripts, promoting transparency and replicability. By illustrating a real-life example of setting up our own study, we aim to guide researchers in navigating the complexities of ESM design.

The Inventory of Interpersonal Problems (IIP) can be used to assess respondents' general interpersonal distress and specific interpersonal style. In addition to a 64-item version, multiple 32-item versions exist. This includes the IIP-32 that is also in the IIP-64 manual and the IIP-Short Circumplex (IIP-SC); both were previously derived from the IIP-64. The psychometric characteristics of the English IIP-SC were previously assessed in an American student sample. The psychometric characteristics of a Dutch IIP-32 were previously assessed in a Flemish student sample. The present study aimed to replicate this work in English-speaking international students, and extend it to Dutch students. Participants were students in an undergraduate Psychology program in the Netherlands who completed the IIP-64, the Borderline Features scale of the Personality Assessment Inventory (PAI-BOR), and the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) in English (n = 234) or Dutch (n = 326). IIP-32 and IIP-SC scores were derived from IIP-64 scores. We provide data on the reliability, structural validity, and (using the PAI-BOR and NPI) construct validity of the English and Dutch IIP-SC and IIP-32. Both IIP versions were psychometrically acceptable. We also provide English and Dutch normative data for use in future studies.

Background: Premenstrual disorders, including premenstrual syndrome, premenstrual dysphoric disorder, and premenstrual exacerbation of psychiatric disorders affect a significant portion of reproductive-age females. Accurate diagnosis and tailored treatment are often constrained by the limitations of traditional paper-based symptom diaries. These diaries lack flexibility for personalized symptom tracking and fail to capture treatment-relevant factors such as lifestyle and social events. A digital, adaptable symptom diary is therefore needed. In this paper, we present the protocol for the CycleWise study. This study is a multi-method study aimed at developing a digital menstrual cycle diary within PETRA (PErsonalized Treatment by Real-time Assessment), an ESM-based tool previously designed to support treatment in routine mental health care. Methods and analysis: Following a human-centered design approach and the Centre for eHealth and Wellbeing Research roadmap, patients and clinicians will be involved throughout all phases to ensure the tool meets their needs. In the contextual inquiry phase, we will identify stakeholders and analyze current practices. The value specification phase will focus on assessing stakeholder needs through two focus groups and translating them into functional requirements. A user experience designer will then develop a prototype in the design phase, refining it iteratively based on stakeholder feedback. Implementation strategies will be formulated in the operationalization phase. Finally, uptake, impact and working mechanisms will be evaluated through qualitative interviews and quantitative measures.

The relation between sleep and irritable affect has been studied extensively. However, whether this relation is bidirectional remains unclear. Furthermore, less is still known about associations between sleep and interpersonal behaviors and perceptions during social interactions. The current study examined bidirectional within‐person relations between actigraphy‐based sleep, and irritable affect, quarrelsome behavior, and agreeable perceptions of others assessed using event‐contingent recording of social interactions in a sample of n = 50 participants during either 20 or 40 days. We found that after a night of worse sleep than usual, participants reported more anger and frustration the next day (−0.12, p ≤ 0.01). The reverse was not found. There were no direct associations between sleep and quarrelsome behavior or between sleep and agreeable perceptions. However, worse sleep than usual was indirectly related to more quarrelsome behavior (−0.05, p ≤ 0.001) and less agreeable perceptions (0.06, p ≤ 0.001); that is, via increased irritable affect. These mediation effects imply that poor sleep may impair the quality of one's social interactions. Therefore, targeting sleep could be a means to improve personal and professional relationships.

Bullying victimization is linked to interpersonal difficulties and elevated depression risk, yet it is unclear whether these difficulties persist after victims leave the bullying environment. Using a longitudinal design with event-contingent recording (ECR), we examined the interpersonal styles of bullying victims during their final year of high school (T1) and 1 year later (T2). At T1, we hypothesized that victims would exhibit more maladaptive interpersonal styles compared to adolescents without any bullying experiences (non-involved). At T2, we examined whether the observed differences between the two groups at T1 persisted after participants transitioned out of the bullying environment, which could potentially explain victims’ long-term risk for depression. At T1, participants included 27 self-reported bullying victims and 56 non-involved adolescents; 9 victims and 26 non-involved remained at T2. At each time point, participants completed 14 days of ECR, rating their behaviors and perceptions of their interaction partners (referred to as “others”) on dominance–submissiveness and agreeableness–quarrelsomeness, and pre- and post-ECR measures of depression symptoms. At T1, victims generally perceived others as less agreeable and reported more negative affect than non-involved adolescents. By T2, these general differences in perceived agreeableness and negative affect between victims and non-involved adolescents were no longer observed. However, victims continued to perceive others as less agreeable than non-involved adolescents when perceiving their partners as highly dominant. At both time points, victims consistently reported higher depression symptoms. Additionally, depression symptoms were negatively associated with perceptions of agreeableness at T1 and with behaviors displaying agreeableness at T2. During high school, victims exhibited distinct perceptions of others and affect across social situations compared to non-involved adolescents. Interpersonal differences between victims and non-involved adolescents became less pervasive after leaving high school, but some context-specific differences persisted alongside higher depression symptoms. These findings may help explain victims’ long-term vulnerability to depression, though conclusions are limited by attrition across waves.

Some studies indicate enhanced vocal emotion recognition and emotional prosody perception in musicians. Music perception has been linked to emotion processing. Collective music making has been found to rely on responding to and sharing the emotions of others. Together, these notions suggest musicians may have more empathy, which constitutes the ability to experience and understand others' emotions. In the present study, we asked 25 professional musicians and 23 non‐musicians to complete the Empathy Quotient (EQ), a self‐report questionnaire of affective and cognitive empathy, and a performance measure of empathic accuracy (EA) that involved watching and listening to video clips of targets narrating emotional autobiographical events. EA was derived per participant per clip by correlating their ratings of how targets felt while talking with previously collected target ratings. While musicians scored higher on both EQ subscales, they did not differ significantly from non‐musicians in EA, obtained using rich stimuli involving both auditory and visual information. Hence, while musicians rated themselves to be more empathetic, we found no objective evidence of a musician benefit in empathy. It remains possible that this may show in less information‐rich or more music‐based situations. Alternatively, factors other than musical training alone may play a role.

The Experience Sampling Method (ESM) is increasingly used by researchers from various disciplines to answer novel questions about individuals’ daily lives. Measurement best practices have long been overlooked in ESM research, and recent reviews show that item quality is often not reported in ESM studies. The absence of information about item quality may partly be explained by the lack of consensus on how ESM item quality should be evaluated. As part of the ESM Item Repository project (esmitemrepository.com) — an international open science initiative that collects ESM items in an open item bank and evaluates their quality — we brought together 42 international ESM experts to develop an ESM item quality assessment tool. In four Delphi phases, experts suggested 57 item quality criteria, rated the criteria, provided arguments for and against the criteria, and rated the criteria again, considering reflections from other experts. The result of the Delphi process is ESM-Q: A quality assessment tool consisting of 10 core criteria, as well as an additional 15 supplementary criteria, to be used depending on the type of items being rated and the availability of supplementary information. The criteria cover topics ranging from construct validity to the optimal wording of items. ESM-Q can aid ESM researchers in selecting existing ESM items, developing new high-quality ESM items, and evaluating the quality of ESM items in systematic reviews. Expert reflections also highlight open research questions surrounding ESM item design that form a research agenda for ESM measurement.