Zavlis, Orestis;
Bentall, Richard P;
Fonagy, Peter;
Rigoli, Francesco;
(2025)
A Formal Theory of Mood Instability.
Clinical Psychological Science
10.1177/21677026251363862.
(In press).
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Abstract
Despite empirical progress, theoretical understanding of mood instability remains stagnant. A major reason for this stagnation concerns the field’s reliance on narrative theories that cannot integrate disparate quantitative perspectives on mood dynamics. Here, we address the limitations of narrative theorizing by developing a formal theory of mood instability. Our theory is predicated on the computational process of “evaluation”: the process of appraising the value of stimuli, which has long been theorized to be central to mood dynamics. Building on reinforcement-learning models of evaluation, we propose a dynamic framework, which we use to simulate various evaluative situations. Our simulations can generate and thereby formally integrate three well-known types of mood instability: emotional rigidity/inertia, transience/instability, and sensitivity/reactivity. We discuss how this formal perspective could enhance the theory, clinical utility, and measurement of mood instability.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | A Formal Theory of Mood Instability |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1177/21677026251363862 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1177/21677026251363862 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © The Author(s) 2025. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage). |
| Keywords: | affective disorders, computer simulation, cognition and emotion, open data, open materials |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences > Div of Psychology and Lang Sciences > Clinical, Edu and Hlth Psychology |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10213214 |
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