Daily stress reactivity: The unique roles of personality and social support

Abstract

Background The processes through which social support exerts its influence in daily life are not well understood. Arguably, its salutary effects as an environmental variable might be construed as shared effects of personality. Method To test this possibility, we investigated the unique and shared effects of personality and social support on daily stressor exposure (social conflict, task strain) and on the within‐person association of stressor exposure with perceived stress. A community‐sample of N = 391 adults completed an ambulatory assessment protocol for two 2‐day periods with fixed hourly intervals spread across 16 hr. Results Consistent with our preregistered hypotheses, multilevel structural equation models returned that both, personality and perceived social support, predicted daily stressor exposure and moderated within‐person effects of daily stressors on perceived stress. In contrast to our hypotheses, received social support had no effect on daily stress processes. When Extraversion, Neuroticism, and social support were added as joint predictors, Neuroticism and Extraversion were related to stressor exposure, and further moderated the within‐person link between stressor exposure and stress experience, while perceived social support had an incremental beneficial effect on social conflict exposure and stress appraisal. Conclusion Social support does not increment the well‐established relationships between Neuroticism or Extraversion and stress reactivity.

Individual Differences in Contingencies Between Situation Characteristics and Personality States

“…Many areas of inquiry focus on individual differences in contingencies. For instance, research on stress reactivity has examined individual differences in affective reactivity towards stressors (e.g., Hisler et al, 2020;Kaurin et al, 2021;Kroencke et al, 2020;O'Neill et al, 2004); research on motivation has examined individual differences in the associations between need satisfaction and well-being (e.g., Neubauer et al, 2018Neubauer et al, , 2020b; and work on the association between Extraversion and well-being has examined the social reactivity hypothesis (Srivastava et al, 2008;Kroencke et al, 2022). Moreover, research on contingencies has been conducted in various applied areas of psychology.…”

Individual differences in contingencies between situation characteristics and personality states.

“…Many areas of inquiry focus on individual differences in contingencies. For instance, research on stress reactivity has examined individual differences in affective reactivity towards stressors (e.g., Hisler et al, 2020; Kaurin et al, 2021; Kroencke et al, 2020; O’Neill et al, 2004); research on motivation has examined individual differences in the associations between need satisfaction and well-being (e.g., Neubauer et al, 2018; Neubauer, Lerche, et al, 2020); and work on the association between Extraversion and well-being has examined the social reactivity hypothesis (Kroencke et al, 2022; Srivastava et al, 2008). Moreover, research on contingencies has been conducted in various applied areas of psychology.…”

Personality Pathology and Momentary Stress Processes

“…The empirical literature on stress processes provides several general frameworks for understanding processes linked to the expression and maintenance of maladaptive traits. These broadly include stress generation, stress reactivity, and affective inertia 1 (Eberhart & Hammen, 2009;Kaurin et al, 2021;Suls, 2001). "Stress generation" refers to the way individuals engage with and interact with their environments that may increase (or decrease) the occurrence of stressful events.…”