Changing Feelings: Individual Differences in Emotional Inertia

A key dynamical property of affect is the degree to which feelings persist across contexts and time, labelled emotional inertia. Although some degree of persistence may be a generally functional quality of affect, excessive emotional inertia is often considered maladaptive, reflecting inflexible emotional processing and/or regulation. In this chapter, we begin by reviewing the conceptual and theoretical background to research on emotional inertia. Next, we provide a selective review of classic and more recent empirical research on individual differences in emotional inertia and its association with psychological adjustment. Finally, we end by outlining some unresolved issues and recommendations for how these might be addressed in future research. We believe that further research on intra- and inter-individual differences in emotional inertia will potentially reveal important insights into what constitutes (un)healthy affective functioning. However, researchers will have to address several challenges to fully realize this potential. Aside from improving ways to capture emotional inertia in empirical data, if research on inertia is to persist across time, researchers must attempt to firmly establish in what way, under what conditions, in which populations, and by what mechanisms, emotional inertia can or cannot be considered a hallmark of poor emotional health.