The Impact of Positive Affect: Two Weekly Assessment Studies on Benefits of Positive Emotions in Patients with a Chronic Painful Disease

The impact of positive affect was investigated in patients with a chronic painful disease such as rheumatoid arthritis. Main findings from analyses reported in two different papers are presented in this chapter. The dataset applied in both papers consisted of 43 participants that were interviewed by telephone for eight subsequent weeks. Multilevel modeling was applied to analyze the data. Results revealed that positive affect was a source of resilience in the stress-negative affect relationship, and also that for those patients with higher level of readiness to change, positive affect was related to less pain. Results indicated that positive emotions may be contributing factors in the process of recovery for patients with rheumatoid arthritis.