Interindividual Differences and Intraindividual Change in the Intraindividual Relationship between Stress and Negative Affect: Age, Resilience, and Stress Influences

Exploration of development requires the use of research designs and process- oriented methodologies that can capture daily fluctuations within individuals, systematic changes within individuals, and differences between individuals (Nesselroade, 1991). Because the daily relationship between stress and negative affect (NA) relates to long-term mental and physical health outcomes, gaining a better understanding of the environmental and person-related contextual factors that relate to daily variability, systematic change, and individual differences in this daily stress-NA relationship can not only illustrate the resilience process as a whole, but also inform intervention and preventative care strategies aimed toward promoting positive well- being. Examining the stress-NA relationship with multiple time scales and multi-level modeling, therefore, illustrates how the day-to-day relationship between stress and NA changes over time as well as how global characteristics, such as overall stress levels, dispositional resilience, and age relate to differences in the way in which the stress-NA relationship changes.

The purpose of the current study was threefold: 1) To establish the relationships among daily fluctuations in stress, yearly changes in stress, average stress levels and daily NA, and explore how age changes and age differences influence these relationships, 2) To explore the relationships among the daily stress-NA relationship, yearly changes in dispositional resilience, average dispositional resilience levels, and age differences, and 3) To depict the relationships among age changes, age differences, yearly changes in dispositional resilience, and the daily stress-NA relationship. Participants from the midlife and later-life waves of the Notre Dame Study of Health & Well-Being (NDHWB; N = 958) completed daily “burst” assessments of stress and NA as well as global questionnaires that assessed dispositional resilience. Three-level multi- level models were used to analyze the data, and ultimately depicted how cross-sectional age, within-person age changes, dispositional resilience differences, within-person fluctuations in dispositional resilience, and global stress differences impact the daily stress-NA relationship. Thus, the current study provides a holistic illustration of resilience as a dynamic process and depicts how interventions and prevention strategies can best promote resilience.