Momentary persistence of negative interpretations as a dynamic marker of emotional distress

Inflexible revision of negative interpretations has been implicated in depression and social anxiety. Yet, evidence primarily stems from studies employing controlled cognitive tasks that rely on standardized fictional scenarios. To track how negative interpretations persist over time in an everyday life context, this study developed the Daily Life Interpretation Inflexibility Task (DL-IIT) and embedded this cognitive task in an ecological momentary assessment (EMA) protocol. The DL-IIT was designed to capture the emergence and persistence of momentary negative interpretations, and tested their dynamic links with momentary emotions and symptom severity. Community adults (N = 179) reporting varying depression and social anxiety symptoms participated in a 14-day EMA protocol (12,950 completed EMA surveys) measuring momentary interpretations and emotions. Preregistered multilevel analysis showed that higher depressive and social anxiety symptoms were each associated with greater momentary persistence of negative interpretations. At the within-person level, persistence of negative interpretations predicted subsequent increases in negative emotions, but did not predict decreases in positive emotions. In the reverse direction, higher negative emotions and lower positive emotions predicted greater subsequent persistence of negative interpretations. These mood-congruent emotion-to-cognition effects were stronger at higher symptom severity. Complementary dynamic structural equation models revealed reciprocal cross-lagged associations between persistence of negative interpretations and negative emotions, and small reciprocal effects involving positive emotions. Across models, emotion-to-cognition pathways were stronger than cognition-to-emotion pathways. Together, these findings indicate that persistence of negative interpretations is both a symptom-linked individual-difference marker and a momentary process that may contribute to self-reinforcing cognition–emotion cycles in daily life. The DL-IIT provides a scalable method for identifying high-risk moments that could be targeted with just-in-time interventions aimed at enhancing cognitive flexibility.