Dataset Information

Age Differences Across Adulthood in Interpretations of Situations and Situation-Behaviour Contingencies for Big Five States.

ABSTRACT: In the last two decades, a burgeoning literature has begun to clarify the processes underlying personality traits and momentary trait-relevant behavior. However, such work has almost exclusively investigated these questions in young adults. During the same period, much has been learned about adult personality trait development but with scant attention to the momentary processes that contribute to development. The current work connects these two topics, testing developmental questions about adult age differences and thus examining how age matters to personality processes. The study examines how four important situation characteristics are experienced in everyday life and how situations covary with Big Five trait-relevant behavior (i.e., situation-behavior contingencies). Two samples were collected (total N=316), each assessing three age groups: young, middle-aged, and older adults. Using ESM, participants completed reports 4 or 5 times per day across a representative period of daily life. Results suggested age differences in how situations are experienced on average, in the variability around these average situation experiences, and in situation-behavior contingencies. The results therefore highlight that, across adulthood, age groups experience chronically different situations, differ in how much the situations they experience vary moment to moment, and differ in how much situation experience predicts their enactment of traits.

SUBMITTER: Noftle EE

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6938216 | biostudies-literature | 2019 May-Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Age Differences Across Adulthood in Interpretations of Situations and Situation-Behaviour Contingencies for Big Five States.

Noftle Erik E EE Gust Charleen J CJ

European journal of personality 20190501 3

In the last two decades, a burgeoning literature has begun to clarify the processes underlying personality traits and momentary trait-relevant behavior. However, such work has almost exclusively investigated these questions in young adults. During the same period, much has been learned about adult personality trait development but with scant attention to the momentary processes that contribute to development. The current work connects these two topics, testing developmental questions about adult ...[more]

PMID: 31892765

Similar Datasets

Project description:BackgroundResearch indicates that difficulties across multiple socioemotional functioning domains (e.g., social emotion expression/regulation, response to social elicitors of emotion) and negatively biased interpretations of ambiguous social situations may affect eating disorder symptoms. The impact of inflexible interpretations of social situations on eating disorder symptoms is less clear. The present study therefore examined relations between inflexible and biased social interpretations, socioemotional functioning, and eating disorder symptoms.MethodA total of 310 participants from the general population, recruited from an online crowdsourcing platform, completed measures of socioemotional functioning (e.g., rejection sensitivity, negative social exchange), eating disorder symptoms, and positive and negative interpretation bias and inflexibility on a single measurement occasion.ResultsSocioemotional functioning impairments (Pillai's trace = 0.11, p < .001), but not negative (β = .07, p = .162) or positive (β = -.01, p = .804) interpretation bias or inflexible interpretations (β = .04, p = .446), were associated with eating disorder symptoms in multiple regression models. In network analyses controlling statistically for multiple markers of socioemotional functioning, eating disorder symptoms were directly associated with negative (but not positive) interpretation bias. Inflexible interpretations were indirectly linked to symptoms via co-dampening of positive emotions. Exploratory causal discovery analyses suggested that several socioemotional functioning variables (social anxiety, depression, negative social exchange) may cause eating disorder symptoms.ConclusionsConsistent with cognitive-interpersonal models of disordered eating, our results suggest that less accurate (biased, inflexible) interpretations of social information contribute to patterns of cognition (anxious anticipation of rejection) and emotion regulation (down-regulation of positive social emotion) thought to encourage disordered eating.Public significanceThis study suggests that less accurate interpretations of ambiguous social information encourage anxious anticipation of rejection and downregulation of positive social emotions, both of which are thought to promote eating disorder symptoms. Knowledge provided by this study about the likely relations between interpretive processes, social/emotional functioning, and eating disorder symptoms may help inform treatments for eating disorders, particularly those that attempt to modify patterns of interpretation.

Dataset Information

Age Differences Across Adulthood in Interpretations of Situations and Situation-Behaviour Contingencies for Big Five States.

Publications

Age Differences Across Adulthood in Interpretations of Situations and Situation-Behaviour Contingencies for Big Five States.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets