Daily, prospective associations of sleep, physical activity, and sedentary behaviour with affect: A Bayesian...

24 h behaviours (sleep, time awake in bed, moderate-to-vigorous physical activity [MVPA], light physical activity [LPA], and sedentary behaviour [SB]) may influence long-term mental health through their associations with affective experiences in everyday life. Here, we investigated the daily, prospective associations between 24 h behaviours and affect.

Actigraphy-measured 24 h behaviours and self-reported affect data were collected across 7-15 consecutive days in healthy, community-dwelling adults (N = 354, M_age = 22.61 y, 73 % female) providing 2872 days of data. Bayesian multilevel compositional data analysis evaluated how reallocating time between behaviours was associated with next-day affect at between- and within-person levels.

Associations between 24 h behaviours and next-day affect emerged at the within-person, not between-person level. Relative to the remaining behaviours, more LPA predicted 0.14 [95 % CI 0.03, 0.26] higher high arousal positive affect, whereas less SB predicted lower high and low arousal positive affect (-0.14 [-0.25, -0.02] and -0.12 [-0.24, -0.01], respectively) higher high arousal negative affect (0.13 [0.03, 0.23]). Further, within-person 30-min reallocation to LPA from SB, sleep, and time awake in bed also predicted ≥0.03 [0.00, 0.06] higher high arousal positive affect. 30-minute reallocation of time to LPA and MVPA from SB predicted 0.04 [0.01, 0.06] higher high arousal positive affect and -0.02 [-0.04, -0.00] lower low arousal negative affect.

Findings provide stepping stone evidence for identifying optimal daily compositions of 24 h behaviours for affective enhancements in healthy individuals. Replacing time in SB with LPA and MVPA for improving affect should be experimentally tested in daily settings and clinical populations, to inform diagnostic and intervention strategies for better daily affect and mental health.