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We examined age and control belief differences in physical and emotional reactivity to daily stressors in four domains: interpersonal, work, network, and home. We combined data from the National Study of Daily Experiences and the Midlife in the United States survey, resulting in 1,031 participants who reported on 7,229 days. Findings from multilevel models suggest that age and control beliefs play an important role in a person's reactivity to interpersonal, network, and work stressors. Specifically, older age and lower perceived constraints were each related to lower emotional and physical reactivity to interpersonal stressors. High mastery buffered the physical effects of work stressors for younger and older adults, and high mastery was important for middle-aged adults' emotional reactivity to network stressors. High constraint was associated with the strongest physical reactivity to network stressors for younger and older adults.

This study examines the interconnections among education--as a proxy for socioeconomic status--stress, and physical and mental healthy by specifying differential exposure and vulnerability models using data from The National Study of Daily Experiences (N = 1,031). These daily diary data allowed assessment of the social distribution of a qualitatively different type of stressor than has previously been examined in sociological stress research--daily stressors, or hassles. Moreover, these data allowed a less biased assessment of stress exposure and a more micro-level examination of the connections between stress and healthy by socioeconomic status. Consistent with the broad literature describing socioeconomic inequalities in physical and mental health, the results of this study indicated that, on any given day, better-educated adults reported fewer physical symptoms and less psychological distress. Although better educated individuals reported more daily stressors, stressors reported by those with less education were more severe. Finally, neither exposure nor vulnerability explained socioeconomic differentials in daily health, but the results clearly indicate that the stressor-health association cannot be considered independent of socioeconomic status.

Older adults show positive preferences in their gaze toward emotional faces, and such preferences appear to be activated when older adults are in bad moods. This suggests that age-related gaze preferences serve a mood regulatory role, but whether or not they actually function to improve mood over time has yet to be tested. We investigated links between fixation and mood change in younger and older adults, as well as the moderating role of attentional functioning. Age X Fixation X Attentional Functioning interactions emerged, such that older adults with better executive functioning were able to resist mood declines by showing positive gaze preferences. Implications for the function of age-related positive gaze preferences are discussed.