The present study addressed a fundamental gap between research and clinical work by advancing longitudinal explanatory conceptualizations of stress and coping processes that trigger daily affect in the short- and long-term for individuals with higher levels of personality vulnerability. Community adults completed measures of 2 higher order dimensions of perfectionism (personal standards [PS], self-criticism [SC]), neuroticism, and conscientiousness. Then, 6 months later and again 3 years later, participants completed daily questionnaires of stress, coping, and affect for 14 consecutive days. PS was associated with aggregated daily problem-focused coping and positive reinterpretation, whereas SC was uniquely associated with daily negative social interactions, avoidant coping, negative affect, and sadness at Month 6 and Year 3. Multilevel modeling results demonstrated that both individuals with higher PS and those with higher SC were emotionally reactive to event stress, negative social interactions, and avoidant coping at Month 6 and Year 3 and to less perceived control at Year 3. Positive reinterpretation was especially effective for individuals with higher SC at Month 6 and Year 3. The effects of PS on daily stress reactivity and coping (in)effectiveness were clearly distinguished from the effects of neuroticism and conscientiousness, whereas the SC effects were due to shared overlap with PS and neuroticism. The present findings demonstrate the promise of using repeated daily diary methodologies to help therapists and clients reliably predict future client reactions to daily stressors, which, in turn, could help guide interventions to break apart dysfunctional patterns connected to distress and build resilience for vulnerable individuals.

This study of 150 community adults examined heightened emotional reactivity to daily stress as a mediator in the relationships between self-critical (SC) perfectionism and depressive and anxious symptoms over a period of 4 years. Participants completed questionnaires assessing: perfectionism dimensions, general depressive symptoms (i.e., shared with anxiety), specific depressive symptoms (i.e., anhedonia), general anxious symptoms (i.e., shared with depression), and specific anxious symptoms (i.e., somatic anxious arousal) at Time 1; daily stress and affect (e.g., sadness, negative affect) for 14 consecutive days at Month 6 and Year 3; and depressive and anxious symptoms at Year 4. Path analyses indicated that SC perfectionism predicted daily stress-sadness reactivity (i.e., greater increases in sadness in response to increases in stress) across Month 6 and Year 3, which in turn explained why individuals with higher SC perfectionism had more general depressive symptoms, anhedonic depressive symptoms, and general anxious symptoms, respectively, 4 years later. In contrast, daily reactivity to stress with negative affect did not mediate the prospective relation between SC perfectionism and anhedonic depressive symptoms. Findings also demonstrated that higher mean levels of daily stress did not mediate the relationship between SC perfectionism and depressive and anxious symptoms 4 years later. These findings highlight the importance of targeting enduring heightened stress reactivity in order to reduce SC perfectionists' vulnerability to depressive and anxious symptoms over the long term.

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This study of depressed outpatients (N = 43) examined daily stress-sadness reactivity and the cortisol awakening response (CAR) as moderators of the relationship between self-critical (SC) perfectionism and depression over one year. Participants completed perfectionism measures at baseline (Time 1), daily diaries and salivary sampling six months later (Time 2), and an interviewer-rated depression measure at Time 1, Time 2, and one year after baseline (Time 3). Hierarchical multiple regression analyses of moderator effects demonstrated that patients with higher SC perfectionism and higher levels of daily stress-sadness reactivity (i.e., greater increases in daily sadness in response to increases in daily stress) had less improvement in depressive symptoms at Time 3 relative to those of other patients, adjusting for the effects of Time 1 and Time 2 depression. Furthermore, higher SC perfectionism in conjunction with an elevated CAR predicted higher levels of depression at Time 3. In addition, lower SC perfectionism in combination with higher levels of stress-sadness reactivity/CAR was associated with the lowest levels of depression at Time 3. These findings highlight the importance of targeting dysfunctional self-critical characteristics that exacerbate the impact of heightened stress-sadness reactivity and CAR to generate better treatment outcomes for patients with higher SC perfectionism. (PsycINFO Database Record