To capture this pattern, we developed 10 novel metrics to quantify affective bistability—measuring both how often and how intensely people shifted between feeling good and bad.

And that's when the surprise came👇

We asked 121 healthy adults in Spain and Germany:
"How do you feel right now?" (rated from very bad to very good) 6 times a day for a month.

About 54% showed abrupt shifts between feeling good and bad—a pattern we called "Affective Bistability".

Excited to share key findings from our new paper on #Bistability and #AffectDynamics, published in Emotion with @danielsanabria.bsky.social

We asked whether people shift abruptly between feeling good and bad, just like ecosystems flip between multiple stable states.

Here's what we found 🧵👇

To capture this pattern, we developed 10 novel metrics to quantify affective bistability—measuring both how often and how intensely people shifted between feeling good and bad.

And that's when the surprise came👇

We asked 121 healthy adults in Spain and Germany:
"How do you feel right now?" (rated from very bad to very good) 6 times a day for a month.

About 54% showed abrupt shifts between feeling good and bad—a pattern we called "Affective Bistability".