Emodiversity Among U.S. Emerging Adults: Implications for Health and Wellbeing

Emodiversity, or diversity of emotional experience, has received mixed support in the literature as an indicator of health and wellness. The current investigation seeks to contribute to this literature by addressing how the concepts of positive emodiversity and negative emodiversity are related to several wellness indicators (physical, mental, social) within the U.S. emerging adult population (ages 18–30) using cross-sectional and repeated-measures (2 time points) methods. First, in Study 1, positive and negative emodiversity constructs were examined for concurrent relationships with health and wellness indicators among more than 1400 emerging adults. Second, in Study 2, using a Time 1/Time 2 study design, Time 2 health variables were regressed on Time 1 positive and negative emodiversity constructs to examine predictive validity. The results indicated support for positive emodiversity as a concurrent indicator of health and wellness but were not associated with future health and wellness. Negative emodiversity, however, was a poor concurrent indicator but was associated with some indicators of future health and wellness.