Temporal and contemporaneous network structures of affect and physical activity in emotional disorders.

Background: High negative affect, low positive affect, and limited physical activity figure prominently in psychopathology, but little is known about the interrelatedness of affect and physical activity in emotional disorders.
Methods: We combined ecological momentary assessment data with a network approach to examine the dynamic relations among positive affect, negative affect, and smartphone-based estimates of physical activity in 34 participants with anxiety and depressive disorders over a 2-week period.
Results: In the contemporaneous networks, the positive affect nodes exhibited greater overall strength centrality than negative affect nodes. The temporal networks indicated that the negative affect node 'sadness' exhibited the greatest out-strength centrality. Furthermore, physical activity was unconnected to the affect nodes in either the temporal or contemporaneous networks.
Conclusions: Whereas positive affect plays a greater role in the contemporaneous experience of emotions, negative affect contributes more so to future affective states.
(Copyright © 2022 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)