The role of daily need crafting in daily fluctuations in adolescents’ need-based and affective experiences

Based on self-determination theory, this diary study examined associations between adolescents’ daily need crafting and daily fluctuations in their need-based and affective experiences. We also examined the role of daily perceived autonomy-supportive parenting in adolescents’ daily need-crafting. Adolescents (N?=?159; M_age?=?15.56; 62% female) filled out a diary for seven consecutive days. Multilevel path analyses indicated that need crafting varied on a day-to-day basis, with daily need crafting relating positively to daily positive affect and negatively to negative affect. The benefits of daily need crafting were accounted for by higher daily need satisfaction and lower need frustration. Further, on days adolescents perceived more parental autonomy support, they reported more need satisfaction and less need frustration, an effect that was partially due to higher need crafting that day. Overall, the results suggest that need crafting represents a critical pro-active skill, with resulting benefits for adolescents’ daily need-based experiences and well-being.

     

Correction to: The role of daily need crafting in daily fluctuations in adolescents’ need-based and affective experiences

Motivation and Emotion -     

Adolescents’ regulatory emotional self-efficacy beliefs and daily affect intensity

Self-efficacy beliefs in emotion regulation were shown to foster well-being and psychosocial adaptation over time. In this study, we investigated their relationship with daily affect intensity among 199 adolescents aged 15–19. Participants completed the Regulatory Emotional Self-Efficacy Scale measuring perceived capability to manage the experience and expression of negative emotions (SE-NE) and positive emotions (SE-PO). Through Experience Sampling Method, for 1 week they also repeatedly rated their positive affect (happiness and contentment) and negative affect (anger, anxiety, sadness). Multilevel regression models revealed an additive intensifying predictive effect of SE-PO and SE-NE on happiness and contentment, and a single direct negative effect of SE-NE on sadness. Models also highlighted an interactive effect of SE-PO and SE-NE on all negative affect variables, such that only at low SE-PO levels did high SE-NE predict lower negative affect. Findings support the relation between adolescents’ regulatory emotional self-efficacy beliefs and their daily affect intensity, bringing forward suggestions for intervention.     

Are daily fluctuations in perceived environment associated with walking?

The physical environment is thought to influence walking; however, daily variations in perceived environment have received little attention. The current study sought to examine if key within-person factors (i.e., implementation intentions, social support, affect and self-efficacy) would be associated with walking and if perceived access to supportive environments (e.g., access to nice walking paths) and perceived environmental barriers (e.g., bad weather and safety issues) were uniquely associated with walking after controlling for other constructs. Participants (N = 14, 50.0% men, 78.6% White, M age = 59.4 ± 6.4) were in the intervention arm of an 8-week controlled trial promoting walking via personal digital assistants. Participants completed electronic surveys twice a day (total entries = 804) in which they reported brisk walking levels and psychosocial and environmental factors. Multilevel modelling was used to examine within-person variations in constructs as determinants of walking. Results suggested that daily variations in implementation intentions, social support and positive affect were positively associated with walking. Further, perceived access to supportive environments, though not perceived environmental barriers, was positively associated with walking after controlling for other constructs (p < 0.05). Future research should explore intervention components that target context-specific information about perceived access to supportive environments as part of a broader perspective on intervention development.     

Supportive supervisors improve employees' daily lives: The role supervisors play in the impact of daily workload on life satisfaction via work–family conflict

This article presents a multilevel approach that uncovers how day-to-day variations in workload influence life satisfaction by creating work–family conflict, as well as the role supportive supervisors play in influencing these daily relationships. In this experience-sampling study, 135 employees responded to 2 daily surveys (one at work and one at home) for 5 days and a one-time post-study survey. With a total of 810 surveys, hierarchical linear modeling revealed that employees' daily perceived workload positively predicted daily work–family conflict, which in turn negatively predicted daily life satisfaction. Importantly, we found support for a cross-level interaction where supervisor work–family specific support (measured once in the post-study survey) negatively moderated the relationship between daily workload and work–family conflict, attesting the importance of supervisory support in reducing daily interference between work and family.     

Capturing worry in daily life: are trait questionnaires sufficient?

Worry is crucial in the development and maintenance of anxiety disorders and has been associated with several other adverse health outcomes. Yet, little is known about the frequency and perseveration of worry in daily life, and its predictability by widely used trait questionnaires. In this study 432 students completed the Penn State Worry Questionnaire (PSWQ), the Worry Domains Questionnaire (WDQ) and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory-Trait version (STAI-T) and kept a log of worry frequency and duration during six consecutive days and nights. The results showed that worry is a very common phenomenon that is predicted by the two trait worry questionnaires, independent of trait anxiety. The often clinically utilized PSWQ predicted worry duration better than the WDQ, and exclusively predicted night-time worry and several other indices of perseverative and potentially pathogenic worry. Although this study provides some support for the predictive validity of the PSWQ and the WDQ, these questionnaires did not account for the larger part of variance in daily worry. Future studies of worry and its associated perseverative processes should consider using momentary assessments.     

Shame behind the corner? A daily diary investigation of pathological narcissism

This study investigated the association between narcissism and shame, considering different measures of narcissism, different levels of analysis, and different situational conditions. Nonclinical participants (N = 196) completed baseline measures, followed by daily questionnaires for 28 days. Multilevel models indicated that trait and daily vulnerable narcissism, as well as trait neuroticism, were positively associated with daily shame. When controlling for vulnerable narcissism, trait grandiose narcissism was unrelated to shame, and daily grandiose narcissism was mostly negatively related to it. As for situations, social stress and workload were related to increased shame, especially in those high in trait neuroticism, or narcissism scales with neurotic content. Results highlight the key role of shame in pathological narcissistic functioning.     

How was your day? Couples’ affect when telling and hearing daily events

This study examined day‐to‐day mood changes associated with disclosure of positive and stressful events as affect regulation within couples. In daily diaries, 48 couples cohabiting in the United States reported whether they told their partner about the most positive and stressful event of their day. Participants reported greater positive affect on days when they told their partner about the most positive event of their day. This effect was less pronounced among avoidant women. Participants also reported greater positive affect on days when their partner shared their most positive event. Sharing about stressors was not associated with greater negative affect. These findings underscore the importance of investigating affect regulation processes such as daily event disclosures from a dyadic perspective.     

When does the daily hazard rate for committing suicide stabilize in psychiatric outpatients?

To ascertain whether the daily hazard risk rate for committing suicide by psychiatric outpatients stabilizes over time, a parametric survival analysis was calculated for the 6891 outpatients who were followed by Brown, Beck, Steer, and Grisham. Approximately 3 1/4 years after a patient's initial evaluation, the daily hazard rate leveled off and dropped below the hazard rate that would occur if a constant (exponential) daily hazard rate were assumed. The cost-effectiveness of conducting follow-up studies to identify suicidal risk factors in psychiatric outpatients beyond three years was questioned.     

Talking about daily emotional events: Psychological well-being moderates the intensity–disclosure link

The intensity of distressing events predicts people’s disclosure of those events at between-person and within-person levels. Depression symptoms seem to attenuate the within-person relation, but past research has not taken a multidimensional view of depression as a moderator. The authors tested whether two constructs related to depression-general psychological well-being and life satisfaction-account for depression’s moderating effects. In a daily diary study, college students (N = 116) rated the intensity of the day’s most unpleasant event and their disclosure of the event each day for 14 days. Participants completed measures of disclosure tendencies, depression symptoms, well-being, and life satisfaction prior to the diary portion of the study. Multilevel modeling analyses revealed moderating effects of disclosure tendencies and depression on the within-person intensity–disclosure relation. However, when psychological well-being and life satisfaction were entered, depression was no longer a significant moderator, but well-being was. Psychological well-being therefore determines the expression of individual differences in the disclosure of daily emotional events.     

How do habits guide behavior? Perceived and actual triggers of habits in daily life

What are the psychological mechanisms that trigger habits in daily life? Two studies reveal that strong habits are influenced by context cues associated with past performance (e.g., locations) but are relatively unaffected by current goals. Specifically, performance contexts—but not goals—automatically triggered strongly habitual behaviors in memory (Experiment 1) and triggered overt habit performance (Experiment 2). Nonetheless, habits sometimes appear to be linked to goals because people self-perceive their habits to be guided by goals. Furthermore, habits of moderate strength are automatically influenced by goals, yielding a curvilinear, U-shaped relation between habit strength and actual goal influence. Thus, research that taps self-perceptions or moderately strong habits may find habits to be linked to goals.     

Memory lapses during a pandemic: Differential associations between COVID-stress and daily memory lapses?

The policies related to COVID-19 pandemic such as stay at home orders and social distancing increased daily stress and associated impairments in mental health. This study examines the association between COVID-related stress and cognitive functioning by examining two different types of daily memory lapses, those related to prospective memory (i.e., memory for future plans) and retrospective memory (i.e., memory for past information) as well as the perceived emotional and functional consequences of daily memory problems. As part of a larger study, 58 adults (18 men; 22 ± 3 years) completed a web-based version of the daily inventory of stressful events including stress related to COVID-19 and positive/negative affect for eight consecutive days between 8 September 2020 and 11 November 2020. Findings showed that prospective lapses were positively correlated with COVID-19 stressors (r = 0.41, p = 0.002). At the within-person level, daily COVID-19 stressors were significantly associated with the number of prospective lapses (b = 0.088, SE = 0.040). COVID-19-related stressors were not significantly related to retrospective lapses (all ps > 0.05). Our findings suggested that more daily COVID-19 stressors were related to greater numbers of prospective lapses in daily life even among healthy younger adults. Thus, future research should address long term relations of COVID-19 stress and cognitive functioning in addition to the specific cognitive impairments related to COVID-19 infection.     

The effects of daily co-occurrence of affect on older adults’ reactivity to health stressors

Objectives: The present study examined age differences among older adults in the daily co-occurrence of affect and its potential role in buffering the negative effects of health stressors.

Design: Participants were from the Veterans Affairs Normative Aging Study and included 249 young-old adults (age = 60–79 years, M = 71.6) and 64 old-old adults (age = 80–89, M = 82.9) who completed questionnaires assessing stressors, physical health symptoms, and positive and negative affect for eight consecutive days.

Results: An independent samples t-test showed young-old and old-old adults did not significantly differ in their mean levels of daily co-occurrence of affect. The between-person relationships among stressors, health and daily co-occurrence of affect revealed that neither stressors nor health were significantly related to daily co-occurrence of affect. However, results from a multilevel model revealed a three-way cross-level interaction (health stressor × age group × co-occurrence of affect) where old-old adults with higher levels of co-occurrence of affect were less emotionally reactive to health stressors than young-old adults.

Conclusion: These findings provide support for the assertion that co-occurrence of affect functions in an adaptive capacity and highlight the importance of examining domain-specific stressors.     

Is the news making us unhappy? The influence of daily news exposure on emotional states

There is evidence that exposure to negative news is making people feel bad, but not much is known about why this only affects some people or whether this also applies to everyday news exposure. This study examined the direct and indirect effects of daily news exposure on people's affective states. Using ecological momentary assessment (EMA), 63 respondents (24 men and 39 women) reported their news exposure and affective states five times a day for 10 days. In addition, personal relevance of the news and personality characteristics, neuroticism and extraversion, were assessed. Results showed that negative news perceptions were related to more negative affect and less positive affect, and these effects were moderated by personal relevance, but not personality characteristics. The implications of these outcomes are discussed.     

Do we know how we cope? Relating daily coping reports to global and time-limited retrospective assessments

The current study examined the concordance among daily, trait (global retrospective), and time-limited retrospective reports of coping. A sample of 93 adults completed the COPE (C. S. Carver, M. F. Scheier, & J. K. Weintraub, 1989) prior to recording coping with the day's most negative event for 30 consecutive days. At the end of daily data collection, participants recalled to what extent they used each of 16 coping strategies over the past 30 days. Whereas findings indicate generally good concordance between daily and time-limited retrospective reports, concordance between global and daily reports was weak. Only limited evidence was found for systematic individual differences in concordance. Time-limited reports appear to be an adequate, though not ideal, method of determining usual patterns of coping with stress.     

How can mindfulness be promoted? Workload and recovery experiences as antecedents of daily fluctuations in mindfulness

While previous work on mindfulness has focused predominantly on the benefits of mindfulness and of mindfulness interventions, the present article addresses the question of how natural experiences of mindfulness can be promoted in the context of work. Accordingly, this article sheds light on day‐to‐day fluctuations in workload and recovery experiences (psychological detachment and sleep quality) as antecedents of state mindfulness. Furthermore, this study extends extant research that has documented beneficial effects of mindfulness on subsequent recovery experiences by arguing that the relationship between mindfulness and recovery experiences is reciprocal rather than unidirectional. Using an experience‐sampling design across five workdays and involving three daily measurement occasions, we found that sleep quality and workload were related to subsequent levels of mindfulness. While not displaying a significant direct relationship with mindfulness, psychological detachment was indirectly related to mindfulness via sleep quality. Fatigue was identified as an important mechanism explaining these relationships. Furthermore, findings confirmed that the relationship between mindfulness and recovery experiences is reciprocal rather than unidirectional. Taken together, this study contributes to an enriched understanding of the role of mindfulness in organizations by shedding light on factors that precede the experience of mindfulness and by pointing to the existence of gain spirals associated with recovery experiences and mindfulness.

Practitioner points

• Organizations seeking to promote mindfulness among their workforce should try to keep workload to a manageable degree.
• Organizations may also pay attention to care for employees' day‐to‐day recovery as it has been shown to facilitate mindfulness.

     

When and for whom does crying improve mood? A daily diary study of 1004 crying episodes

We aimed to examine the connections between individual affective characteristics and crying, and to evaluate Rottenberg, Bylsma, and Vingerhoets’ (2008) framework for studying crying and mood. We analyzed the relationship among features of the social environment, mood characteristics of the crier, crying frequency/urge to cry, and mood change across 1004 detailed crying episodes sampled from 97 females. Urge to cry and crying frequency were associated with poorer mood, and urge to cry was associated with greater mood variability. Poorer mood was observed both before and after crying episodes, and one-third of crying episodes resulted in reported mood improvement following crying. Benefits of crying, when they occur, are shaped by the social environment and the affective characteristics of the crier.     

Academic performance differences among ethnic groups: do the daily use and management of time offer explanations?

This explorative study describes time use and time management behaviour of ethnic minority and ethnic majority students as possible explanations for the poorer study results of ethnic minority students compared to those of majority students. We used a diary approach in a small sample to examine students’ daily time use in both a lecture week and an exam week. Time management behaviour was measured in a questionnaire, as were demographic variables. The sample consisted of 48 full-time first-year university students of Business Administration of which 24 students belonged to a non-Western ethnic minority group. Student pairs (ethnic majority vs. non-Western ethnic minority) were fully matched by gender, socio-economic status, living situation and type of secondary education. Results showed that ethnic majority students earned higher grades compared to ethnic minority students. As regards time management behaviour, ethnic majority students appeared to have a stronger preference for organisation (e.g., leaving a clear study space at the end of a study day) than ethnic minority students. No differences between ethnic groups were revealed in setting goals and priorities (e.g., setting deadlines) and mechanics of time management (e.g., making to-do lists). Daily time use also appeared to be the same for both ethnic groups.