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

Abstract

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.

Keywords:

• daily co-occurrence of affect
• health stress
• negative affect
• aging

Disclosure statement

The authors have no conflict of interest and no financial interest or benefit.

Notes

1. To rule out the possibility that fluctuations in negative affect and positive affect were more important than mean co-occurrence of affect, we calculated each individual’s within-person standard deviation scores for both positive and negative affect. These scores were then simultaneously entered into the previous model. Results did not change and the three-way cross-level interaction (health stressor × age × co-occurrence of affect) remained significant when fluctuations in positive and negative affect were included as covariates.