title: Emodiversity and the emotional ecosystem.
abstract: [Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported in Vol 143(6) of Journal of Experimental Psychology: General (see record 2014-49316-001). There is a color coding error in Figure 2. The correct color coding is explained in the erratum.] Bridging psychological research exploring emotional complexity and research in the natural sciences on the measurement of biodiversity, we introduce--and demonstrate the benefits of--emodiversity: the variety and relative abundance of the emotions that humans experience. Two cross-sectional studies across more than 37,000 respondents demonstrate that emodiversity is an independent predictor of mental and physical health--such as decreased depression and doctor's visits--over and above mean levels of positive and negative emotion. These results remained robust after controlling for gender, age, and the 5 main dimensions of personality. Emodiversity is a practically important and previously unidentified metric for assessing the health of the human emotional ecosystem.
authors.affiliation: Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
authors.forename: Jordi
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Quoidbach
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Yale University.
authors.forename: June
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Gruber
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Université Catholique de Louvain.
authors.forename: Moïra
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Mikolajczak
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Cambridge.
authors.forename: Alexsandr
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kogan
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Université Libre de Bruxelles.
authors.forename: Ilios
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Kotsou
authors.affiliation: Marketing Unit, Harvard Business School.
authors.forename: Michael I
authors.initials: MI
authors.lastname: Norton
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D003863:Depression / Q000523:psychology; D004644:Emotions / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008603:Mental Health; D008875:Middle Aged; D010551:Personality; D055815:Young Adult