Context Matters: Preliminary Evidence That the Association between Positive Affect and Adiposity in Infancy Varies in Social vs. Non-Social Situations

Authors

Alexis C Wood
Shabnam R Momin
MacKenzie K Senn
David J Bridgett

Publication Date

6-9-2022

Journal

Nutrients

DOI

10.3390/nu14122391

PMID

35745120

PMCID

PMC9227739

PubMedCentral® Posted Date

6-9-2021

PubMedCentral® Full Text Version

Post-print

Published Open-Access

yes

Keywords

Adiposity, Body Mass Index, Cross-Sectional Studies, Humans, Infant, Nutritional Status, Obesity, infancy, adiposity, positive affect, temperament, longitudinal, situational effects, BMI, weight-for-length, context, development

Abstract

Previous studies have suggested that infants high in negative affect have higher levels of adiposity, arising in part via changes in nutrition (e.g., “feeding to soothe”). Few studies have examined whether positive affect shows similar or inverse associations with adiposity. The current study examined cross-sectional and longitudinal relationships between adiposity and observations of positive affect in both a social and a non-social context, using data from infants at four (n = 125) and 12 (n = 80) months of age. Our analyses did not find any cross-sectional associations between positive affect and adiposity (all p > 0.05). However, in the longitudinal analyses, positive affect in a non-social context, when observed at four months of age, was positively associated with weight-for-length at 12 months of age (zWFL; ß = 1.49, SE = 0.67, p = 0.03), while positive affect observed at four months of age in a social context was inversely associated with body fat percentage at 12 months of age (ß = −11.41, SE = 5.44, p = 0.04). These findings provide preliminary evidence that the p positive affect is related to adiposity in infancy and suggest that the direction of association (i.e., direct or inverse) may be specific to the context in which positive affect is measured. Future research should examine the role of nutritional status in any relationships between adiposity and emotion at this early stage.