Initial Elevation of Reports 2 SignificancePeople's reports of their own thoughts, feelings and behaviors are essential assessment tools in biomedical and social science. They be used to take a snapshot of how people are doing and to track change and the effects of interventions. When subjective states have been studied over time, researchers have often observed an unpredicted and puzzling decrease with repeated assessments. Our results across multiple outcomes in four field experiments suggest that this pattern is due to an initial elevation bias. This effect is larger for reports of internal states rather than behaviors and for negative mental states and physical symptoms than for positive states. This initial elevation bias needs to be considered in all types of research using subjective reports. AbstractPeople's reports of their thoughts, feelings and behaviors are used in many fields of biomedical and social science. When these states have been studied over time, researchers have often observed an unpredicted and puzzling decrease with repeated assessment. When noted, this pattern has been called an "attenuation effect", suggesting that the effect is due to bias in later reports. However, the pattern could also be consistent with an initial elevation bias. We present the first systematic, experimental bias, rather than a later decline. This bias is larger for reports of internal states than behaviors, and for negative mental states and physical symptoms than positive states.

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The factors that allow people to be good support providers in relationships are not fully understood. We examined how support providers' stressful experiences (financial strain and racial discrimination) differentially influence their supportiveness, using longitudinal data from two samples of African American couples. Among couples that provided observational data ( N = 163 couples), providers who experienced high chronic financial strain behaved less supportively toward their partners, while those who experienced frequent racial discrimination behaved more supportively over a 2-year period. In a second sample of 213 couples over a 3-year period, support providers who experienced financial strain were perceived by their partners as slightly less supportive, while providers who experienced frequent racial discrimination were perceived by their partners as more supportive. Findings suggest that supportiveness in relationships may be differentially shaped by the specific stresses and strains that partners face.

This study examined the impact of neighborhood racial discrimination on the development of major depressive disorder (MDD) in a sample of African American women. Participants were 499 women from Georgia and Iowa with no history of MDD who were followed for 9 to 11 years. Several neighborhood characteristics (community social disorder, community cohesion, and community racism) and individual characteristics (negative life events, financial strain, personal outlook, religious involvement, relationship quality, negative affectivity, and individual experiences of racism) were employed as predictors of whether or not the women met criteria for MDD during this period of time. In a multilevel logistic regression analysis, neighborhood-level discrimination as well as individual-level variables including the number of negative life events, financial strain, and negative affectivity were found to be significant predictors of developing MDD. Analyses of cross-level interactions indicated that the effects of neighborhood-level discrimination were moderated by the quality of individuals' relationships, such that better relationships with others served to lessen the effect of neighborhood discrimination on depression. Implications of these findings for understanding the negative effects of racial discrimination are discussed. AbstractThis study examined the impact of neighborhood racial discrimination on the development of

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