This study investigated how time to oneself (solitude) is experienced under conditions of extended togetherness with household members during the pandemic. Both structural (living arrangements) and ...qualitative characteristics (relationship quality and conflict) were examined for their association with solitude desire and daily solitude–affect links. We expected that people living with others and those with more high‐quality as well as those with more conflictual relationships would report better affect quality when experiencing solitude. A Canadian adult lifespan sample (N = 141; Mage = 38.43 years, SDage = 17.51; 81% female; 73% White; data collected from April to August 2020) provided information on household size and relationship characteristics and completed repeated daily life assessments of solitude desire, solitude, and affect. Findings show that living arrangements were not associated with an increased desire for solitude or better affect quality from solitude. Individuals reporting higher relationship quality and individuals reporting more conflict showed more favorable affect quality on days when they had time in solitude than individuals reporting lower quality relationships and lower conflict. Findings add to the growing solitude literature by delineating who seeks and benefits from solitude, and under what conditions.
Physical activity is a behavior that promotes physical and mental health; yet physical activity has decreased during the COVID-19 pandemic. To promote health during times of challenge, it is ...important to identify potential barriers to this key health behavior, such as loneliness. This brief report extends previous research on physical activity and loneliness that mainly focused on between-person differences to examine their time-varying associations at the within-person level using repeated daily life assessments. From April 2020 to August 2020, data were collected from a sample of 139 community-dwelling Canadian adults (
= 40.65 years,
= 18.37; range = 18-83 years). Each evening for 10 consecutive days, participants reported their loneliness, number of steps, and minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. Results revealed that, in line with our hypotheses, on days when participants reported more loneliness they also engaged in less moderate-to-vigorous physical activity than on less lonely days (
= -0.24,
= 0.007); there was a significant negative association between loneliness and daily number of steps (
= -18.42,
= 0.041). In contrast, at the between-person level, overall loneliness was not associated with overall physical activity engagement after accounting for within-person differences and control variables (age, sex, day in study). From an intervention perspective, our findings suggest that it is promising to tackle loneliness on a day-to-day basis to increase physical activity one day at a time. This may be especially relevant during times mandating social-distancing, but also at other times when individuals experience greater feelings of loneliness.
Everyday gratitude may shape affect intensity, particularly during challenging times like a pandemic. A group of 140 community-dwelling Canadian participants (Mage = 40.49 years, range: 18-83; 80% ...women) provided up to 10 days of daily gratitude and affect ratings during the first pandemic wave. Multilevel models show that everyday gratitude was associated with higher positive affect and lower negative affect, independent of age; age was positively correlated with the number of social gratitude events. Participants reported lower negative affect if a social gratitude event involved more than less diverse social partners. The findings point to the merit of examining time-varying associations in gratitude as a potential resource for everyday affect across the adult lifespan.
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CEKLJ, FFLJ, NUK, ODKLJ, PEFLJ
Older adults spend significant time by themselves, especially since COVID‐19. Solitude has been associated with positive and negative outcomes. Partners need to balance social connectedness with time ...for one's own needs. This project examines how individual and partner solitude are associated with daily affect and relationship quality in dyads of older adults and a close other. One‐hundred thirty‐six older adults plus a close other rated their relationship quality and reported affect, solitude, and its characteristics (desired and bothersome) every evening for 10 days. Over and above overall associations, individual and partner effects emerged; when individual desired solitude was up, participants reported more positive affect and their partners less negative affect. When bothersome solitude was up, participants and their partners alike reported more negative affect and less positive affect. Desired solitude was associated with more support, whereas bothersome solitude was associated with less partner support. Findings provide further evidence on the potential benefits of solitude, highlighting the importance of considering the social context of what is often believed to be an individual‐level phenomenon.
Cannabis and health research continue to largely ignore the usage patterns, perceptions, and medically related use in Spanish-speaking communities. The primary aim of this study was to collect data ...among Spanish-speaking communities on cannabis use that specifically characterizes granular demographic information, medically motivated and recreational use patterns including potency of products, medical motivations for use, and what perceptions are held as to risks and benefits. Secondarily, exploratory analyses were made to investigate potential effects of location or acculturation status. Five hundred forty-nine individuals completed the survey, including 294 residing in the United States (US) (Mage =31.8, SD=9.72; 154 women, 137 men, 3 non-binary and self-described individuals), 174 residing outside of the US (International) (Mage =26.6, SD=8.75; 77 women, 96 men, 1 non-binary and self-described individuals), and 81 who did not report country of residence (Unknown location) (Mage =26.7, SD=7.37; 17 women, 61 men, 3 non-binary and self-described individuals). Overall use was mostly recreational, while the US group was significantly more motivated by medical or combined medical and recreational reasons than the other two groups (p=0.02). The most common reason for medical use was anxiety or depression (14% of sample). The US group also smoked or vaporized significantly more often than the other two groups and was more likely to include daily users (p<0.001). The sample generally viewed the effects of cannabis use more favorably than negatively, but there were significant differences in these views between users and non-users. The rich heterogeneity suggested by these data belies the importance of taking an equity focused approach to cannabis research and will help to improve representation in the field.
Negative and repetitive self-oriented thinking (rumination) is associated with lower well-being and health. The social context of rumination remains underexplored and mostly centers on marital ...relationships. To embrace the diversity of older adult relationships, this study includes a range of different relationships (e.g., spouses, siblings, friends, etc.) and examines the role of rumination by close others on individual well-being during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic.
Using daily diary data from 140 Canadian older adults (M = 72.21 years, standard deviation SD = 5.39, range: 63-87 years, 47% women, 71% university educated) and a close other of their choice (M = 59.95 years, SD = 16.54, range: 18-83 years, 78% women, 81% university educated), this project builds on past research examining daily life rumination dynamics from a dyadic perspective. For 10 days, both dyad members reported their daily rumination and affect quality in the evening.
Multilevel models replicate past work showing that individual rumination was associated with higher negative affect (within-person: b = 0.27, p < .001, between-person: b = 0.57, p < .001) and lower positive affect (within-person: b = -0.18, p < .001, between-person: b = -0.29, p < .001). Importantly, we additionally observed that partner rumination was associated with higher negative affect (b = 0.03, p = .038) and lower positive affect (b = -0.04, p = .023), highlighting the social context of rumination.
Findings illustrate the significance of rumination for the self and others and underline the merit of taking a dyadic perspective on what is typically viewed as an individual-level phenomenon.
Abstract
Solitude, defined as physical aloneness or the absence of social interactions, has been associated with both positive and negative outcomes. Older adults spend a significant amount of their ...waking time by themselves (exacerbated during the pandemic), but they may be better equipped to regulate the negative emotions that are often linked with being alone. Additionally, solitude may provide a balance between social connectedness and autonomous needs. Using pandemic, end-of-day daily diary data across 10 days from 136 older Canadian adults and a close other of their choice (59% spouses, M = 66.49 years, SD = 13.26 range: 18-87 years, 88% White, 62% women), this project aims to examine associations of actor and partner solitude with relationship quality and daily affect. Multilevel models revealed that participants who reported more voluntary solitude experienced more daily positive affect and those who reported more negative solitude experienced both more negative affect and less positive affect at both daily and overall levels. We also found daily partner effects such that more voluntary solitude of the partner was associated with less actor negative affect and negative solitude of the partner being associated with less actor positive affect and more negative affect over and above actor effects. Finally, when partners reported more voluntary solitude, participants reported higher relationship support. Findings shed light on the benefits and drawbacks of how solitude is experienced in older adulthood, highlighting the influence social partners affect quality and relationship satisfaction.
Abstract
Rumination involves repetitive, self-oriented, negative thinking and is known to be detrimental to psychological well-being and health. However, little is known about the extent to which ...rumination is associated with well-being and health in close relationship partners in older age. Additionally, the pandemic was a time that was characterized by high stress, making it an important context to study rumination. Using daily diary data from 140 Canadian older adults plus a close other of their choice (59% spouses, M = 66.72 years, SD = 13.01 range: 18-87 years, 88% White, 62% women), this project builds on past evidence examining daily life rumination dynamics and extends it to a dyadic perspective beyond couples. For ten days, both dyad members provided evening ratings of daily rumination and affect quality. Multilevel models replicate individual level evidence that higher daily rumination was associated with more daily negative affect and less daily positive affect. Importantly, we also found partner effects such that more close others’ rumination was associated with elevated actors’ negative affect (b = 0.03, p = .038) and reduced actors’ positive affect (b = -0.04, p = .023), suggesting that it is not only one’s own rumination that relates to daily well-being, but also that of a close tie. Findings demonstrate the utility of taking a dyadic perspective on what is typically conceived as an individual-level phenomenon.
Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic compromised psychological wellbeing, especially given public health guidance that restricted social contact. Engaging in daily social interactions is especially ...important for maintaining wellbeing, and virtual interactions may be a surrogate for face-to-face interactions when in-person contact is not possible. Embracing the idea that virtual communication may facilitate social connectedness, this project seeks to better understand the potential of virtual social interactions for supporting wellbeing. Using repeated-daily-life-assessments from an adult lifespan sample (N=164, Mage=42.53 years), we examined how number of virtual and face-to-face social interactions were associated with positive affect in individuals’ daily lives. We expected that face-to-face interactions would have a stronger relationship with positive affect than virtual social interactions, but that engaging in virtual interactions would be positively related to affect during these unprecedented times. In line with our hypotheses, number of daily in-person (r(812)=0.14, p<.001) and total number of social interactions (r(812)=0.14, p<.001) were associated with higher positive affect at the bivariate level; number of daily virtual social interactions showed a positive trend with affect (r(812)=0.06, p=.07). Multilevel models including quantity of face-to-face and virtual interactions indicate that only face-to-face interactions were associated with concurrent elevations in positive affect (b=0.58, p=.03) and overall higher positive affect (b=0.72, p<.001). Future analyses will examine whether social interactions involving close ties are more powerful drivers of positive affect than distal ties, whether everyday closeness to others mediates the relationship between social interaction modality and positive affect, and we will unpack age as a moderator in these relationships.
Abstract
Socioemotional Selectivity Theory posits that individuals with a limited future time perspective (FTP), prioritize emotionally meaningful, positive social interactions. Due to the high value ...placed on positive social interactions, individuals with a limited FTP might be particularly vulnerable to experiencing elevated negative affect when problems that involve other people do occur as compared to an experience of non-social problems. This project examined the role of FTP in modulating social problem–negative affect links during the pandemic, a time when people were particularly aware of their mortality, and thus their remaining time in life. This study used data from 150 Canadian adults (Mage =43 years, SD= 19, range 18-83, 78% women) who participated in two measurement bursts (one in 2020 and one in 2021). Participants provided FTP information at baseline and then repeatedly reported their negative affect and everyday problem characteristics in 10 consecutive daily diaries across both bursts. Results from multi-level models reveal a differentiated picture. The within-person association between social problem occurrence and elevated negative affect was significant among individuals with a more limited FTP. In contrast, at the between-person level, experiencing more social problems was associated with higher overall negative affect among those with a more extended FTP. To better understand these differential associations, follow-up analyses will explore if type of person involved in the problem and how the problem was handled matter for how they respond to social problems. Findings will be discussed in the context of the Strength and Vulnerability Integration model.
