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Dissertation
MOMENTARY EMOTIONS AND MENSTRUAL PHASES: An ESM study on the association between menstrual phases and intrapersonal or interpersonal emotions
Authors: --- --- ---
Year: 2023 Publisher: Leuven KU Leuven. Faculteit Psychologie en Pedagogische Wetenschappen

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Abstract

The luteal stage of the menstrual cycle has been associated with a variety of psycho-emotional symptoms including increased negative affect and mood swings (e.g., Laessle et al., 1990 ; Matthew et al., 2022; Ojezele et al., 2022; Vala et al., 2023). However, most of the studies which investigated menstrual psycho-emotional experiences used retrospective designs which are prone to be influenced by cultural and personal beliefs, and do not grasp the complexity of daily emotional dynamics. In addition, menstrual research has only investigated the impact of menstrual stages on emotional experiences within women, neglecting their potential interpersonal effects. The aim of this study was twofold: on one hand, we investigated the impact of menstrual stages (i.e., follicular, and luteal) on participants’ momentary positive and negative affect. We hypothesized to observe higher negative affect and lower positive affect in the luteal phase in women while no differences were expected in positive or negative affect in men. On the other hand, we studied the effect of menstrual stages on couples’ positive and negative interpersonal emotional similarity. We expected lower positive and negative couples’ momentary emotional similarity during the luteal stage compared to the follicular stage. Contraceptive use was subsequently added in the models for both our research questions. Participants were couples (N= 31) who completed a two-phase ESM study in which both partners rated their own positive and negative affect several times a day for 10 days in total. Menstrual phases of female participants (i.e., follicular and luteal) were calculated using the two self-reported menses onsets, the average length of the menstrual cycle, and their answers to the question “Are you on your menstrual period today?” during the ESM study. We tested our two research questions using multilevel modeling. First, our results did not show any significant difference between participants’ positive and negative affect in the follicular compared to the luteal phase. Second, we did not observe any effect of menstrual stages on couples’ negative interpersonal emotional similarity, while we observed an increase in couples’ positive interpersonal emotional similarity in the luteal phase compared to the follicular phase. We did not observe differences between menstrual effects in women on contraceptives versus naturally cycling women neither in our first research question nor in the second one. Our findings do not support the hypothesized effects of the menstrual cycle on momentary intrapersonal and interpersonal emotional experiences and cast doubts about the influences of cultural and personal beliefs when investigating the phenomenon with retrospective designs. Nonetheless, our study included an oversimplification of menstrual phases which may not have appropriately captured the effect of menstrual stages. Future research should investigate menstrual cycle effects on momentary affect by including a standardized method to code menstrual stages in order to increase their overlapping with hormonal fluctuations.

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