Reported exposure and emotional reactivity to daily stressors: The roles of adult age and global perceived stress.

Abstract

A central goal of daily stress research is to identify resilience and vulnerability factors associated with exposure and reactivity to daily stressors. The current study examined how age differences and global perceptions of stress relate to exposure and emotional reactivity to daily stressors. Sixty-seven younger (M age = 20) and 116 older (M age = 80) adults completed a daily stress diary and measures of positive and negative affect on 6 days over a 14 day period. Participants also completed a measure of global perceived stress. Results revealed that reported exposure to daily stressors is reduced in old age, but that emotional reactivity to daily stressors did not differ between young and older adults. Global perceived stress was associated with greater reported exposure to daily stressors in old adults, and greater stress-related increases in negative affect in younger adults. Furthermore, across days on which daily stressors were reported, intraindividual variability in the number and severity of stressors reported was associated with increased negative affect, but only among younger adults. KeywordsAging; Stress; Emotion; Emotional Reactivity The experience of both major life events and daily stressors has been linked to numerous negative physical health outcomes, as well as mental health and psychological well-being (Baum & Posluzny, 1999;Grzywacz, Almeida, Neupert & Ettner, 2004;Kiecolt-Glaser, McGuire, Robles, & Glaser, 2002;Pinquart & Sorensen, 2003). In contrast to major life events, which are relatively rare, daily stressors (or "hassles") are minor stressors that occur with greater frequency and represent proximal aspects of stress in individuals' daily lives and environments. There has been increased interest in examining factors associated with exposure and reactivity to daily stressors in order to identify risk-and protective-factors (Almeida, 2005). Furthermore, it is important to understand who is at risk for experiencing daily stressors, as well what factors exacerbate (or protect against) reactivity to these events, because these minor hassles could have long-lasting, detrimental effects on physical and mental health (Lazarus, 1999;Zautra, 2003). The current study was conducted to examine reported exposure and emotional reactivity to daily stressors in younger (e.g., in their 20s) and older (e.g., in their 80s) adults, and the role of one's perceived stress in exposure and emotional reactivity to daily stressors.Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Robert S. Stawski, Pennsylvania State University -Gerontology Center, 135 E. Nittany Ave., Suite 405, State College, PA 16801, Ph: 814.865.7374, Fax: 814.863.9423, rss24@psu.edu, or Recent studies have shown that age plays an important role in daily stress processes (Mroczek & Almeida, 2004;Sliwinski, Smyth, Hofer & Stawski, 2006), and understanding the role of age in exposure and reactivity to daily stressors is important because it can help characterize daily experiences and well-being across the lifespan. Furth...

Persons as Contexts: Evaluating Between-Person and Within-Person Effects in Longitudinal Analysis

“…Previous daily stress research has shown that negative mood is higher on stressor days as compared to nonstressor days (e.g., Stawski, Sliwinski, Almeida, & Smyth, 2008). Therefore, we continue our example by examining to what extent the observed associations between daily stress and physical symptom reports would remain after controlling for negative mood.…”

Resilience and mental health

“…social or ethnic group) and also as a result of genetic factors (Cameron et al, 2007). For example, shared family and unique environmental effects have been reported to account for the variance in perceived severity of daily stressors (Charles & Almeida, 2007) which is in turn a determinant of resilience (Stawski, Sliwinski, Almeida, & Smyth, 2008). In addition, the influence of a unique environment on perceived stress has been observed to exert a stronger influence on older adults irrespective of gender (Charles & Almeida, 2007).…”

Normal aging dampens the link between intrusive thoughts and negative affect in reaction to daily stressors.

“…However, when affective reactivity to daily stressors is measured directly, some findings challenge propositions of a reduction in older age. Evaluations of stressor severity and affective reactivity to daily stressors were sometimes shown to be lower in older compared with younger adults (Birditt et al, 2005;Stawski, Almeida, Lachman, Tun, & Rosnick, 2010;Uchino, Berg, Smith, Pearce, & Skinner, 2006), but also stronger (Mroczek & Almeida, 2004), or invariant across age groups (e.g., Stawski, Sliwinski, Almeida, & Smyth, 2008). Methodological differences across studies as well as the sampling of stressor types may contribute to a heterogeneous picture of findings (Röcke, Li, & Smith, 2009;Stawski et al, 2008).…”