The Associations between Affect and Internalizing Symptoms in the Reporting of Stressors in Daily Life

Stressor reactivity, the association between the experience of stressors and same-day changes in affect (Almeida et al., 2023), has been examined extensively. Much less research has examined the complementary process: the extent to which affect may influence the perception of stressors. We examined whether affect in daily life was related to the likelihood that individuals report stressors, and whether internalizing symptoms (depressive and anxious symptoms) were associated with these links. Participants (N = 609) were recruited from an undergraduate participant pool and reported daily on their positive and negative affect, and the types of stressors they experienced, in a 14-day daily diary design. We used multilevel survival analysis (MSA) to estimate the likelihood of reporting recurring stressors from mean levels of positive and negative affect, the previous day's positive and negative affect, internalizing symptoms (depressive and anxious symptoms), and interactions between previous day's affect and internalizing symptoms. Previous day's affect was not associated with the risk of reporting stressors. Greater negative affect at the between-person level was associated with a greater risk of all types of stressors we examined, whereas lower between-person positive affect was only associated with the risk of reporting work/school and any stressors. Depressive and anxious symptoms were related in different ways to the likelihood of reporting stressors. This study demonstrates the utility of daily diary methods in combination with MSA to examine directional associations from affect to stressors and their temporal links.