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Linking person and context in the daily stress process
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
|January 1, 1987
Summary
Chronic neighborhood stress worsens daily mood, while major life events surprisingly reduce stress impact. Social support helps mitigate lingering mood effects from daily stressors.
Area of Science:
- Psychology
- Sociology
- Public Health
Background:
- Understanding individual differences in stress response is crucial for mental health.
- Daily stressful events can significantly impact mood and well-being.
- Chronic environmental stressors may influence the immediate and lasting effects of daily hassles.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate how individual differences, specifically chronic ecologic stress and major life events, affect the impact of daily stressful events on mood.
- To examine the potential buffering role of social supports in the daily stress-mood relationship.
- To introduce an advanced method for analyzing daily time-series data in stress research.
Main Methods:
- Combined daily diary data with interview data from 96 urban women.
- Assessed perceived neighborhood quality and major life events as moderators.
- Analyzed social support as a potential buffer using time-series analysis, correcting for autocorrelated error terms.
Main Results:
- Chronic neighborhood stress (ecologic stress) amplified immediate and next-day mood effects of daily stressors.
- Prior major life events unexpectedly decreased the impact of daily stressful events on mood.
- Social support did not buffer immediate mood effects but mitigated enduring effects on subsequent mood.
Conclusions:
- Environmental stressors significantly influence daily mood regulation.
- The impact of daily stress is complex, moderated by both chronic stressors and life history.
- Social support plays a role in mitigating the long-term emotional consequences of daily stress.