Daily emotional stress reactivity in emerging adulthood: temporal stability and its predictors

ABSTRACT

Background & Objectives: Emotional reactivity to stress is associated with both mental and physical health and has been assumed to be a stable feature of the person. However, recent evidence suggests that the within-person association between stress and negative affect (i.e., affective stress-reactivity) may increase over time and in times of high stress, at least in older adult populations. The objective of the current study was to examine the across-time stability of stress-reactivity in a younger sample – emerging adulthood – and examine neuroticism, overall stress, social support and life events as potential moderators of stability.

Design & Methods: Undergraduate students (N = 540, mean age = 18.76 years) participated in a measurement burst design, completing a 30-day daily diary annually for four years. Moderators were assessed once at every burst, while negative affect and stress were assessed daily via a secure website.

Results & Conclusions: Findings suggest a relatively high degree of rank-order and mean-level stability in stress-reactivity across the four years, and within-person changes in neuroticism and overall stress predicted concurrent shifts in stress-reactivity. Unlike older samples, there was no evidence of an overall linear change in stability over time, though there was significant variability in linear change trajectories.

KEYWORDS:

• Stress
• emotion
• emerging adulthood
• longitudinal change
• stress-reactivity

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The number of waves completed was higher among Caucasian (vs. others; r = .09, p < .05), females compared to makes (r = .16, p < .01), and participants with higher mean levels of daily stress (r = .09, p < .05) and higher mean levels of social support (r = .11, p < .01). Number of waves completed was lower among individuals with higher mean levels of daily negative mood (r = −.12, p < .01) and higher mean levels of negative life events (r = −.21, p < .01). Importantly, results indicated no association between the number of waves completed and stress-reactivity (b = 0.003, SE = .003, p = .404).

2 Models were re-estimated using listwise deletion and the results were substantively identical.

3 Pearson correlations were based on the listwise deleted sample of N = 309.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) [grant number 5P60-AA003510], and preparation of this manuscript was supported by NIAAA [grant number 5T32-AA07290].