Bidirectional Associations Between Loneliness, Emotional Support, and Sleep in Daily Life.

OBJECTIVE: Evidence suggests a link between positive social relationship perceptions and improved sleep (e.g., quality, efficiency) across the life span. Less work has probed the directionality of these relationships. Here, we report findings from the first study to examine bidirectional between- and within-person associations between loneliness and emotional support with daily life measures of sleep. METHODS: Participants were 389 healthy adults aged 40 to 64 years (61% female) who completed hourly surveys assessing loneliness and perceptions of emotional support over the course of 4 days. Measures of actigraphy-assessed sleep and nightly sleep quality were also assessed for 7 to 10 days. RESULTS: Individuals with lower average daily loneliness showed higher sleep quality and efficiency than individuals with higher loneliness (r = -0.19, p < .001; r = -0.14, p = .008, respectively), and greater average emotional support was likewise linked with better sleep quality (r = 0.18, p < .001). Controlling for neuroticism attenuated the effects of average loneliness on sleep. Within-person analyses showed unexpected bidirectional effects. Specifically, days in which people felt relatively lonelier were followed by nights with greater sleep efficiency (γ = 1.08, p = .015), and nights when people reported relatively poorer sleep quality were followed by days with greater emotional support (γ = -0.04, p = .013). These unexpected findings are probed in exploratory analyses. CONCLUSIONS: Individuals with higher loneliness and lower emotional support report poorer sleep quality and efficiency, on average. Day-to-day fluctuations in perceptions of social relationships may affect the following night's sleep, and vice versa.

Sex-specific associations between childhood trauma and adult systemic inflammation in daily life.

OBJECTIVE: Childhood trauma may contribute to lifelong health through chronic systemic inflammation. However, associations between childhood trauma and inflammation are mixed, indicating that distinct types of childhood trauma may relate to inflammation differently. Moreover, most studies use a single assessment of inflammatory markers that may not reliably estimate stable interindividual differences. The current study is the first to examine relationships between childhood trauma and an ecologically valid measure of inflammation derived from repeated assessments of interleukin (IL)-6 in daily life. We also examine the possibility that glucocorticoid sensitivity and patterns of daily cortisol may contribute to observed associations. Finally, we explore whether biological sex moderates relationships between childhood trauma and IL-6. METHOD: Participants were 283 healthy adults aged 40-64 (57% female, 23% Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) who completed the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire and self-collected dried blood spots at home on 4 days to measure IL-6. Measures of salivary cortisol and blood-based glucocorticoid sensitivity were also assessed. RESULTS: Childhood trauma was not associated with IL-6 in the sample as a whole. However, exploratory analyses showed that childhood trauma related to IL-6 differently for males and females, such that total trauma and emotional neglect predicted higher IL-6 for males but not females. Results persisted after adjustment for covariates. There was no evidence for indirect effects via cortisol or glucocorticoid sensitivity. CONCLUSIONS: Childhood trauma and, specifically, emotional neglect were associated with IL-6 in daily life among middle-aged males. Additional research is needed to elucidate biological and behavioral pathways underlying these associations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Stressor-evoked brain activity, cardiovascular reactivity, and subclinical atherosclerosis in midlife adults.

Background: Cardiovascular responses to psychological stressors have been separately associated with preclinical atherosclerosis and hemodynamic brain activity patterns across different studies and cohorts; however, what has not been established is whether cardiovascular stress responses reliably link indicators of stressor-evoked brain activity and preclinical atherosclerosis that have been measured in the same individuals. Accordingly, the present study used cross-validation and predictive modeling to test for the first time whether stressor-evoked systolic blood pressure (SBP) responses statistically mediated the association between concurrently measured brain activity and a vascular marker of preclinical atherosclerosis in the carotid arteries. Methods: 624 midlife adults (aged 28-56 years, 54.97% female) from two different cohorts underwent two information-conflict fMRI tasks, with concurrent SBP measures collected. Carotid artery intima-media thickness (CA-IMT) was measured by ultrasonography. A mediation framework that included harmonization, cross-validation, and penalized principal component regression was then employed, while significant areas in possible direct and indirect effects were identified through bootstrapping. Sensitivity analysis further tested the robustness of findings after accounting for prevailing levels of cardiovascular disease risk and brain imaging data quality control. Results: Task-averaged patterns of hemodynamic brain responses exhibited a generalizable association with CA-IMT, which was mediated by an area-under-the-curve measure of aggregate SBP reactivity. Importantly, this effect held in sensitivity analyses. Implicated brain areas in this mediation included the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, insula and amygdala. Conclusions: These novel findings support a link between stressor-evoked brain activity and preclinical atherosclerosis accounted for by individual differences in corresponding levels of stressor-evoked cardiovascular reactivity.

Effects of a laboratory-based aerobic exercise intervention on brain volume and cardiovascular health markers: protocol for a randomised clinical trial.

INTRODUCTION: Physical activity (PA) has beneficial effects on brain health and cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk. Yet, we know little about whether PA-induced changes to physiological mediators of CVD risk influence brain health and whether benefits to brain health may also explain PA-induced improvements to CVD risk. This study combines neurobiological and peripheral physiological methods in the context of a randomised clinical trial to better understand the links between exercise, brain health and CVD risk. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: In this 12-month trial, 130 healthy individuals between the ages of 26 and 58 will be randomly assigned to either: (1) moderate-intensity aerobic PA for 150 min/week or (2) a health information control group. Cardiovascular, neuroimaging and PA measurements will occur for both groups before and after the intervention. Primary outcomes include changes in (1) brain structural areas (ie, hippocampal volume); (2) systolic blood pressure (SBP) responses to functional MRI cognitive stressor tasks and (3) heart rate variability. The main secondary outcomes include changes in (1) brain activity, resting state connectivity, cortical thickness and cortical volume; (2) daily life SBP stress reactivity; (3) negative and positive affect; (4) baroreflex sensitivity; (5) pulse wave velocity; (6) endothelial function and (7) daily life positive and negative affect. Our results are expected to have both mechanistic and public health implications regarding brain-body interactions in the context of cardiovascular health. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: Ethical approval has been obtained from the University of Pittsburgh Institutional Review Board (IRB ID: 19020218). This study will comply with the NIH Data Sharing Policy and Policy on the Dissemination of NIH-Funded Clinical Trial Information and the Clinical Trials Registration and Results Information Submission rule. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: NCT03841669.

Does light physical activity reduce blood pressure responses to laboratory stressors?

Individuals exhibiting exaggerated blood pressure responses to stress are at increased risk for later cardiovascular disease. Engagement in brief bouts of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity may reduce instances of these exaggerated blood pressure responses. While observational work has shown that periods of light physical activity may also be associated with reduced blood pressure responses to stress in daily life, the few experimental studies involving light physical activity have methodological limitations that temper conclusions. The current investigation sought to understand the effects of brief bouts of light physical activity on blood pressure responses to psychological stress. In a between-person, single-session experimental design, 179 healthy, young adults were randomized to 15 min of light physical activity, moderate physical activity, or sitting before engaging in a 10-min computerized Stroop Color-Word Interference Task. Blood pressure readings were collected throughout the study session. Surprisingly, the light physical activity participants showed higher systolic blood pressure responses to stress than control participants by 2.9 mmHg (F (2, 174) = 3.49, ηp 2  = 0.038, p = .03), whereas no significant differences were shown between moderate physical activity and control groups (F (2, 174) = 2.59, ηp 2  = 0.028, p = .078). These findings show that light physical activity may not be related to reduced blood pressure responses to stress in an experimental session involving healthy, college-aged adults and question the extent to which brief bouts of physical activity may reduce acute blood pressure responses to stress.

Early Life SES, Childhood Trauma Exposures, and Cardiovascular Responses to Daily Life Stressors in Middle-aged Adults.

BACKGROUND: Dysregulation in physiological responses to stress may provide a mechanism through which low socioeconomic status (SES) in childhood negatively impacts health. Evidence linking early life SES to physiological stress responses is inconsistent. Exposure to childhood trauma may be an important source of heterogeneity accounting for mixed findings. Guided by the adaptive calibration model, we examined whether childhood SES and childhood trauma jointly predict ambulatory measures of cardiovascular responses to daily life stressors. METHOD: A sample of 377 healthy, middle-aged adults (62% female, 80% White, 64% college-educated, Mage = 52.59 ± 7.16) completed a 4-day ecological momentary assessment protocol that measured task strain, social conflict, and ambulatory systolic and diastolic blood pressure (SBP and DBP, respectively) at hourly intervals throughout the day. Average ambulatory blood pressure responses to stress were calculated by regressing momentary SBP and DBP on momentary measures of stress within the multilevel models. Early life SES and childhood trauma were measured retrospectively by self-report questionnaire. RESULTS: Multilevel models controlling for momentary influences on blood pressure and age, sex, and race showed no main effects of early life SES or childhood trauma on ambulatory measures of cardiovascular responses to daily life stress. An interaction emerged for DBP responses to social conflict, where individuals raised in middle SES families who experienced trauma showed a blunted response relative to those who did not ([Formula: see text]-0.93, 95% CI: [-1.62, -0.24], p = .008). There was no significant SES-trauma interaction in predicting SBP responses to social conflict or blood pressure responses to task strain. CONCLUSION: Results do not provide support for our predictions that were derived from the adaptive calibration model, but do suggest that the impacts of early childhood experiences on cardiovascular responses may vary by type of daily stress experience.

Expectations of respect and appreciation in daily life and associations with subclinical cardiovascular disease.

OBJECTIVE: To test whether expectations of respect and appreciation from others, assessed in daily life, are associated with preclinical vascular disease. METHOD: Participants were an urban community sample of 483 employed adults (47% male, 17% Black, mean age = 42.8 years). Carotid intima-media thickness (IMT) was measured using B-mode ultrasound. Expectations of being treated with respect and appreciation were measured using the average of hourly assessments over the course of 4 days, and home and work averages were also examined separately. RESULTS: Expectations of greater respect and appreciation from others were associated with significantly less carotid IMT even after adjustment for demographic factors, general positivity and negativity of social interactions, neuroticism, optimism, perceived discrimination, and concurrent biological risk factors. This association was similar across social contexts of work and home and also when expectations of respect and appreciation were examined separately. Lower expectations of respect and appreciation and more negative social interactions were both independently associated with greater IMT in fully adjusted models and effect sizes were similar to traditional biological risk factors such as BMI. CONCLUSIONS: Midlife adults who anticipate greater respect and appreciation from others in everyday life evidence less preclinical vascular disease. Consistent with the literature showing that anticipation of social threats and unfair treatment may increase cardiovascular risk, expectations of being valued and treated with respect by others is associated with decreased risk. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Longitudinal associations of social support, everyday social interactions, and mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Main effect models contend that perceived social support benefits mental health in the presence and the absence of stressful events, whereas stress-buffering models contend that perceived social support benefits mental health especially when individuals are facing stressful events. We tested these models of how perceived social support impacts mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic and evaluated whether characteristics of everyday social interactions statistically mediated this association - namely, (a) received support, the visible and deliberate assistance provided by others, and (b) pleasantness, the extent to which an interaction is positive, flows easily, and leads individuals to feel understood and validated. 591 United States adults completed a 3-week ecological momentary assessment protocol sampling characteristics of their everyday social interactions that was used to evaluate between-person average values and within-person daily fluctuations in everyday social interaction characteristics. Global measures of perceived social support and pandemic-related stressors were assessed at baseline. Psychiatric symptoms of depression and anxiety were assessed at baseline, at the end of each day of ecological momentary assessment, and at 3-week follow-up. Consistent with a main effect model, higher baseline perceived social support predicted decreases in psychiatric symptoms at 3-week follow-up (ß = -.09, p = .001). Contrary to a stress-buffering model, we did not find an interaction of pandemic-stressors × perceived social support. The main effect of perceived social support on mental health was mediated by the pleasantness of everyday social interactions, but not by received support in everyday social interactions. We found evidence for both main effects and stress-buffering effects of within-person fluctuations in interaction pleasantness on daily changes in mental health. Results suggest the importance of everyday social interaction characteristics, especially their pleasantness, in linking perceived social support and mental health.

Aerobic exercise improves episodic memory in late adulthood: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Background: Aerobic exercise remains one of the most promising approaches for enhancing cognitive function in late adulthood, yet its potential positive effects on episodic memory remain poorly understood and a matter of intense debate. Prior meta-analyses have reported minimal improvements in episodic memory following aerobic exercise but have been limited by restrictive inclusion criteria and infrequent examination of exercise parameters. Methods: We conducted a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials to determine if aerobic exercise influences episodic memory in late adulthood (M = 70.82 years) and examine possible moderators. Thirty-six studies met inclusion criteria, representing data from 2750 participants. Results: Here we show that aerobic exercise interventions are effective at improving episodic memory (Hedges'g = 0.28; p = 0.002). Subgroup analyses revealed a moderating effect of age (p = 0.027), with a significant effect for studies with a mean age between 55-68 but not 69-85. Mixed-effects analyses demonstrated a positive effect on episodic memory among studies with a high percentage of females (65-100%), participants with normal cognition, studies reporting intensity, studies with a no-contact or nonaerobic physical activity control group, and studies prescribing >3900 total minutes of activity (range 540-8190 min). Conclusions: Aerobic exercise positively influences episodic memory among adults ≥55 years without dementia, with larger effects observed among various sample and intervention characteristics-the clearest moderator being age. These results could have far-reaching clinical and public health relevance, highlighting aerobic exercise as an accessible, non-pharmaceutical intervention to improve episodic memory in late adulthood.

A Longitudinal Study of Age-Based Change in Blood Pressure Reactivity and Negative Affect Reactivity to Natural Stressors.

OBJECTIVE: Aging is theoretically accompanied by emotional gains, but physiological self-regulatory losses. Emotional and physiological regulation can be operationalized as the extent of an increase in negative affect and blood pressure upon experiencing a stressor (i.e., reactivity). The direction of age-based changes in negative affect reactivity to stressors is uncertain. In addition, evidence for age-based increases in blood pressure reactivity to stressors is based largely on age-based differences observed in cross-sectional and laboratory-based studies. The present study is the first to examine long-term longitudinal changes in stress-related reactivity for both blood pressure and negative affect in the natural environment. METHODS: A total of 375 healthy adults aged 50 to 70 years completed 6 days of hourly ambulatory blood pressure assessment and electronic diary reports of social conflict and task demand and control. Two hundred fifty-five participants repeated 3 days of assessment in a 6-year follow-up. With reactivity operationalized as the change in an outcome in association with momentary social conflict, task strain, or task demand (i.e., a model-derived slope parameter), multilevel models were used to assess aging-based change in blood pressure and negative affect reactivity over the course of the 6-year follow-up. RESULTS: Aging is associated with increased diastolic blood pressure reactivity to social conflict and task demand (ßsocial_conflict = 0.48, p = .007; ßtask_demand = 0.19, p = .005), increases in negative affect reactivity to social conflict and task strain (ßsocial_conflict = 0.10, p < .001; ßtask_strain = 0.08, p = .016), and increases in systolic blood pressure reactivity to task-based stress (ßtask_strain = 1.29, p = .007; ßtask_demand = 0.23 p = .032). CONCLUSION: Findings suggest age-based increases in affective and cardiovascular reactivity to natural stressors.

Sleep and Daily Social Experiences as Potential Mechanisms Linking Social Integration to Nocturnal Blood Pressure Dipping.

OBJECTIVE: Socially integrated individuals are at lower risk of cardiovascular disease morbidity and mortality compared with their more isolated counterparts. This association may be due, in part, to the effect of social integration on nocturnal blood pressure (BP) decline or "dipping," a physiological process associated with decreased disease risk. However, the pathways linking social integration with nocturnal BP dipping are unknown. We sought to replicate the association between social integration and BP dipping, and to test whether sleep characteristics (duration, regularity, continuity) and/or daily social interactions (frequency, valence) helped to explain the association. METHODS: A total of 391 healthy midlife adults completed an actigraphy assessment protocol that measured sleep. During four actigraphy assessment days, participants also completed ambulatory BP monitoring and ecological momentary assessment protocols that measured BP and social interactions at regular intervals throughout the day. Social integration was assessed via a questionnaire. RESULTS: Linear regression controlling for age, sex, race, education, and body mass index indicated that higher levels of social integration were associated with greater nocturnal BP dipping, as indicated by a smaller ratio of night/day mean arterial pressure (ß = -0.11, p = .031). Analyses of indirect effects suggested that this association was explained, in part, by greater sleep regularity among more integrated individuals. We did not find evidence for other hypothesized indirect effects. CONCLUSIONS: This was the first study to investigate sleep and social mechanisms underlying the link between social integration and nocturnal BP dipping. Because sleep regularity is modifiable, this pathway represents a potential intervention target to promote nocturnal BP dipping.

Randomized feasibility trial of a digital intervention for hypertension self-management.

Home blood pressure monitoring (HBPM) can improve hypertension management. Digital tools to facilitate routinized HBPM and patient self-care are underutilized and lack evidence of effectiveness. MyBP provides video-based education and automated text messaging to support continuous BP self-monitoring with recurring feedback. In this pragmatic trial, we sought to generate preliminary evidence of feasibility and efficacy in community-dwelling adults ≥55 y/o with hypertension recruited from primary care offices. Enrollees were provided a standard automatic BP cuff and randomized 2:1 to MyBP vs treatment-as-usual (control). Engagement with MyBP was defined as the proportion of BP reading prompts for which a reading was submitted, tracked over successive 2-week monitoring periods. Preliminary measures of efficacy included BP readings from phone-supervised home measurements and a self-efficacy questionnaire. Sixty-two participants (40 women, 33 Blacks, mean age 66, mean office BP 164/91) were randomized to MyBP (n = 41) or a control group (n = 21). Median follow-up was 22.9 (SD = 6.7) weeks. In the MyBP group, median engagement with HBPM was 82.7% (Q1 = 52.5, Q3 = 89.6) and sustained over time. The decline in systolic [12 mm Hg (SD = 17)] and diastolic BP [5 mm Hg (SD = 7)] did not differ between the two treatment groups. However, participants with higher baseline systolic BP assigned to MyBP had a greater decline compared to controls [interaction effect estimate -0.56 (-0.96, -0.17)]. Overall hypertension self-efficacy improved in the MyBP group. In conclusion, trial results show that older hypertensive adults with substantial minority representation had sustained engagement with this digital self-monitoring program and may benefit clinically.

Conscientiousness and Cardiometabolic Risk: A Test of the Health Behavior Model of Personality Using Structural Equation Modeling.

BACKGROUND: High trait conscientiousness is associated with lower cardiometabolic risk, and health behaviors are a putative but relatively untested pathway that may explain this association. PURPOSE: To explore the role of key health behaviors (diet, physical activity, substance use, and sleep) as links between conscientiousness and cardiometabolic risk. METHODS: In a cross-sectional analysis of 494 healthy, middle-aged working adults (mean age = 42.7 years, 52.6% women, 81.0% White), participants provided self-reports of conscientiousness, physical activity, substance use, diet, and sleep, and wore monitors over a 7-day monitoring period to assess sleep (Actiwatch-16) and physical activity (SenseWear Pro3). Cardiometabolic risk was expressed as a second-order latent variable from a confirmatory factor analysis involving insulin resistance, dyslipidemia, obesity, and blood pressure. Direct, indirect, and specific indirect effect pathways linking conscientiousness to health behaviors and cardiometabolic risk were examined. Unstandardized indirect effects for each health behavior class were computed separately using bootstrapped samples. RESULTS: After controlling for demographics (sex, age, race, and education), conscientiousness showed the predicted, inverse association with cardiometabolic risk. Among the examined health behaviors, objectively-assessed sleep midpoint variability (b = -0.003, p = .04), subjective sleep quality (b = -0.003, p = .025), and objectively-assessed physical activity (b = -0.11, p = .04) linked conscientiousness to cardiometabolic risk. CONCLUSIONS: Physical activity and sleep partially accounted for the relationship between conscientiousness and cardiometabolic risk.

What Can We Learn From More Than 140,000 Moments of Ecological Momentary Assessment-Assessed Negative Emotion and Ambulatory Blood Pressure? A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

OBJECTIVE: Two decades of research has examined within-person associations between negative emotion states and ambulatory blood pressure (ABP) using ecological momentary assessment (EMA), but no meta-analysis has been conducted. We conducted this systematic review and meta-analysis to quantify the magnitude of this association and identify moderators, review strengths and weaknesses in conceptual and measurement approaches, and provide recommendations. METHODS: We searched databases (PsycINFO, PubMed), identified 15 studies, and obtained data from 13 studies (n = 2511; 142,307 observations). RESULTS: Random-effects meta-analyses demonstrated small effect r values between momentary negative emotions and systolic ABP (r = 0.06) and diastolic ABP (r = 0.05; p values < .001). Meta-regressions found that effects were larger among studies focused on anxiety, multidimensional negative emotions, predominantly female samples, or less observations of each participant (p values from .003 to .049). A qualitative review found that few studies examined moderators contributing to the substantial interindividual differences in this association. CONCLUSIONS: The small association between momentary negative emotion and ABP extends laboratory findings on the association between the experiential and physiological aspects of emotion to the daily, natural emotional experiences of individuals. This literature could be strengthened by determining interindividual and intraindividual moderators of this association (e.g., trait negative emotion and state positive emotion), examining differential associations of different negative emotions with ABP, and standardizing EMA protocols. Although the effect is small, to the extent that repeated emotion-related cardiovascular reactivity may contribute to cardiovascular disease risk, identifying daily life triggers of emotion is important.

Cortisol activity partially accounts for a relationship between community socioeconomic position and atherosclerosis.

Compared to others, individuals living in communities of socioeconomic disadvantage experience more atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (CVD) and a greater extent of preclinical atherosclerosis. Although the mechanisms underlying these associations remain unclear, it is widely hypothesized that alterations in normative cortisol release from the Hypothalamic Pituitary Adrenal (HPA) axis may play a role in linking lower community socioeconomic position (C-SEP) to CVD risk. The current study examined this hypothesis in relation to a marker of preclinical atherosclerosis among 488 healthy midlife adults (30-54 years, Mean age= 43, 52% Female, 81% White). All participants were employed and without clinical CVD. C-SEP was estimated from census tract data, and atherosclerosis was measured as intima-medial thickness of the carotid arteries (cIMT) by duplex ultrasonography. Four indicators of HPA activity [cortisol at awakening and the cortisol awakening response (CAR), rate of diurnal decline in cortisol (diurnal slope), and total output expressed as area under the curve (AUC)] were derived from salivary cortisol measurements obtained from 5 samples on each of 3 working days. Path analyses were used to examine associations of C-SEP with cIMT and HPA activity and to test whether individual differences in HPA activity could account for any association of C-SEP with cIMT using bootstrapping (5000 iterations). All models were adjusted for age, sex, race, and composite measures of both individual-level socioeconomic position (income, education, occupation), and cardiometabolic risk (systolic and diastolic blood pressure, waist circumference, fasting lipids and glucose). Lower C-SEP was related to both greater cIMT (b = -0.004, p = .021) and a flatter diurnal slope of cortisol (b = -0.001, p = .039). An indirect effect showed attenuated diurnal slope to partially mediate the relationship between C-SEP and cIMT (95% CI = -0.0018 to -0.0001), and a residual direct effect of C-SEP on cIMT remained significant (95% CI = -0.0097 to -0.004). These results suggest that low C-SEP associations with preclinical atherosclerosis may be due in part to correlated variation in adrenocortical activity.

Daily stress reactivity: The unique roles of personality and social support.

BACKGROUND: The processes through which social support exerts its influence in daily life are not well understood. Arguably, its salutary effects as an environmental variable might be construed as shared effects of personality. METHOD: To test this possibility, we investigated the unique and shared effects of personality and social support on daily stressor exposure (social conflict, task strain) and on the within-person association of stressor exposure with perceived stress. A community-sample of N = 391 adults completed an ambulatory assessment protocol for two 2-day periods with fixed hourly intervals spread across 16 hr. RESULTS: Consistent with our preregistered hypotheses, multilevel structural equation models returned that both, personality and perceived social support, predicted daily stressor exposure and moderated within-person effects of daily stressors on perceived stress. In contrast to our hypotheses, received social support had no effect on daily stress processes. When Extraversion, Neuroticism, and social support were added as joint predictors, Neuroticism and Extraversion were related to stressor exposure, and further moderated the within-person link between stressor exposure and stress experience, while perceived social support had an incremental beneficial effect on social conflict exposure and stress appraisal. CONCLUSION: Social support does not increment the well-established relationships between Neuroticism or Extraversion and stress reactivity.

Day-to-day associations between sleep characteristics and affect in community dwelling adults.

Despite the high co-occurrence of sleep and mood disturbances, day-to-day associations between sleep characteristics (sleep duration, continuity, and timing) and dimensions of mood (positive affect and negative affect) remain unclear. The present study aimed to test whether there is a daily, bidirectional association between these sleep characteristics and affective states, while addressing methodological limitations in the extant literature by using actiography and ecological momentary assessment methods. Participants were community dwelling, midlife adults (aged 30-54 years, N = 462, 47% male) drawn from the Adult Health and Behavior Project-Phase 2 study. Participants' sleep patterns were assessed with actiography over a 7-day monitoring period, and on 4 of those days, participants completed an ecological momentary assessment protocol that included hourly assessments of positive affect and negative affect during their wake intervals. Using hierarchical linear modelling, we tested whether participants' sleep characteristics on a given night predicted next-day affect and vice versa. We also explored whether nocturnal sleep characteristics would differentially associate with affect at different times of day (morning, afternoon, and evening) while controlling for multiple health behaviours. We found that when participants reported higher positive affect on a given day, they slept later that night (B = 0.22, p = .010). Although we found no other statistically significant associations in our primary analyses (all p > .05), we found several sleep-affect associations specific to time of day (B ranges: 0.01-0.18, all p ≤ .02), which warrants further study. Overall, our findings suggest that healthy adults may be resilient to daily fluctuations in their sleep and mood.

The double burden of racial discrimination in daily-life moments: Increases in negative emotions and depletion of psychosocial resources among emerging adult African Americans.

Objective: Racial discrimination is a common experience for African Americans, but no research has examined how discrimination reported in daily-life moments influences concurrent negative emotions and psychosocial resources. Method: Emerging adult African Americans (N = 54) reported hourly on momentary racial discrimination, negative emotions, and psychosocial resources across two days. Results: Controlling for past discrimination and trait emotion, momentary racial discrimination was associated with greater negative emotions and lower psychosocial resources (ps < .05). The relationship between momentary racial discrimination and negative emotions was stronger among individuals residing in areas with fewer African Americans (simple slope p < .0001). The relationship between momentary racial discrimination and psychosocial resources was stronger among individuals reporting greater past discrimination (simple slope p < .0001). Vicarious discrimination (exposure to discrimination experienced by another person) was associated with higher negative emotions (p < .01), but not with psychosocial resources. Conclusion: These results are the first to demonstrate that personal and vicarious racial discrimination are associated with negative emotions and lower coping resources in daily-life moments and that contextual factors modify these associations. Results refine our understanding of the immediate sequelae of discrimination in daily life and point to possible targets for ecological momentary interventions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Social Integration and Diurnal Cortisol Decline: The Role of Psychosocial and Behavioral Pathways.

OBJECTIVE: A growing number of studies have associated various measures of social integration, the diversity of social roles in which one participates, with alterations in hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) functioning. The pathways through which social integration may be linked to HPA functioning, however, are as yet unknown. The present study examined whether daily social interactions, affective responses, health behaviors, and personality help explain the association between social integration and diurnal cortisol slope. METHODS: A sample of 456 healthy, employed adults (53.9% female, 82.0% white, 72.2% bachelor's degree or greater, mean age of 42.86 years) completed a 4-day ecological momentary assessment protocol that measured cortisol, social interactions, affect, sleep, and physical activity at frequent intervals throughout the day. Social integration was measured at baseline. RESULTS: Regression results controlling for age, sex, race, and education indicated that more socially integrated individuals showed steeper cortisol slopes (B = -0.00253, p = .006). Exploratory analyses suggested that the consistency (i.e., reduced variability) in nightly sleep midpoint partially explained this association (B = -0.00042, 95% confidence interval = -0.00095 to -0.00001). Personality, mood, social interaction patterns, and nonsleep health behavior differences did not account for the association between social integration and HPA activity. CONCLUSION: This study replicates previous findings linking social integration and HPA functioning, and it examines patterns of nightly sleep as possible pathways through which the association may operate. Results have implications for understanding mechanisms for health risk and for development of future interventions.

Hostility Dimensions and Metabolic Syndrome in a Healthy, Midlife Sample.

OBJECTIVE: Evidence links trait hostility with components of the metabolic syndrome (MetS), a clustering of cardiometabolic risk factors, but which hostility dimensions (e.g., expressive or cognitive hostility) relate to MetS are not well known. Further, there may be age and sex differences in the extent to which hostility dimensions relate to MetS. The present study evaluated associations between dimensions of hostility and the metabolic syndrome and its individual components as well as the moderating effects of sex and age. METHODS: In a cross-sectional sample of 478 employed adults, a principal component analysis from common trait hostility questionnaires yielded a two-factor solution: expressive hostility (anger and aggression) and cognitive hostility (cynicism). Each of these two components of hostility was examined as predictors of each of two aggregated MetS outcomes: a dichotomous measure of MetS, based upon the NCEP-ATP III definition, and a continuous measure based upon the average of standardized scores for each component; and they were examined as predictors of individual MetS components as well. RESULTS: Expressive hostility was associated with MetS severity (b = 0.110, p = 0.04) and waist circumference (b = 2.75, p = 0.01). Moderation analyses revealed that elevated expressive hostility was associated with elevated waist circumference in women but not men. Cognitive hostility was not related to any metabolic syndrome component or aggregated outcome, and no moderation was observed. CONCLUSIONS: Among multiple individual components and two aggregated scores, only trait dispositions to expressed hostile affect and behavior were associated with MetS severity and waist circumference. The effects were small but statistically significant. The association between cognitive hostility and metabolic syndrome measures may not be robust in a large sample of healthy, midlife adults.