[Robert J Klein, Ph.D.]

Learn More about Dr. Klein's research:

In my view, the emotions we experience are determined in large part by the ways in which we think about our life experiences (including our emotions themselves). Moreover, I see emotional or affective experiences as the core drivers of human quality of life, both in terms of psychological well-being as well as the most common mental health problems including depression, anxiety, substance abuse, and even suicide. From this perspective, it is essential for emotional science to clearly understand the relationship between different thinking processes (e.g., distress tolerance) and the emotions or moods we experience. Naturally, understanding the link between how we think and how we feel starts with conceptualizing and measuring emotional episodes with precision. Problematically, though, the majority of emotional reaction paradigms employed in emotion science (e.g., EMAs) are woefully unsophisticated, and have not kept pace with recent advancements in emotion science. For instance, a recent sea change has emphasized emotional reactions as entities that fundamentally a) unfold over time, and b) occur in response to a rapidly changing environment. Such an extra-dimensional perspective means that “emotional reactions” are not monolithic entities compromised of a single "reaction magnitude", but are likely comprised of multiple distinct psychological processes. These processes include those governing the maximum intensity of a given reaction, the duration of the reaction, and even the intensity of the activating event required to illicit the reaction (i.e., reaction threshold). Because the psychological processes driving reaction intensity (e.g., appraisal bias) and reaction duration (e.g., rumination) are likely quite different, and because existing paradigms cannot distinguish between these phenomena (and likely conflate them), affective science may have an incomplete understanding of the specific psychological processes that are actually driving key emotion-based outcomes like neuroticism, anxiety, or depression. For these reasons, much of my research has focused on developing experimental paradigms that are capable of differentiating and codifying these distinct dynamic reactivity processes. Through this basic science, I aim to develop a theory of emotional reactivity that articulates a new taxonomy for what the key emotional reactivity processes are, as well as identifies the distinct roles that these processes may play in shaping emotion-related psychological health outcomes. For instance, my own research suggests that processes underlying the peak intensity of emotion reactions to unpleasant stimuli are actually supportive of adaptive behavior and greater well-being, while psychological processes that trigger elongated emotional reactions (e.g., distress intolerance, rumination) may have the opposite effect on mental health. Given that affect/emotion generation processes play a central role in most concepts of psychological health, such a theory could ultimately help to guide transdiagnostic interventions that more directly target key maladaptive transdiagnostic emotion-generation processes, and thereby efficiently increase happiness as well as mitigate emotion-related pathologies such as depression, anxiety, suicide, and substance abuse. I see digital transdiagnostic therapeutics as a highly describable, low-cost, scalable, low-patient burden option that could truly take on the mental health challenges our society faces. I have begun work on one such intervention which uses targets "nonattachment", a thinking processes that has been specifically associated with decreased duration of emotional episodes.