The grass is not as green as you think: Affect evaluation in people with internalizing disorders

•How people evaluate their state emotional experience, affect evaluation, is important.•People, regardless of mental health status, think they should feel better.•Anxious and depressed samples think they should feel even better than controls.•Differences between healthy and clinical groups were not driven by mean affect.

BackgroundAffect evaluation - how people evaluate their emotion experiences - has important implications for mental health.MethodsWe examined how 70 adults diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder and/or Generalized Anxiety Disorder or no psychiatric disorders (control group) believe they should feel in the moment (should affect). We repeatedly assessed participants' current affect and should affect over one week using experience sampling. To examine the psychometric properties of should affect, participants rated their level of rumination at each survey and completed trait measures of brooding and ideal affect at the lab.Results and conclusionsIndependent of group status, participants reported that they should be feeling more positive affect and less negative affect. Even after accounting for mean affect, the clinical groups' reports were generally more extreme than were those of the control group. We documented good convergent and discriminant validity of should affect. Finally, we describe clinical implications and directions for future research.