Within-person changes in religiosity, control beliefs, and subjective well-being across middle and late adulthood.

Given the well-established link between control beliefs and well-being, researchers have turned their attention to characterizing mechanisms that help foster this relationship across the second half of life. Cross-sectional, empirical work has identified a mediating relationship among religiosity and spirituality (R/S), control beliefs, and subjective well-being, such that individuals with higher R/S show higher subjective well-being that is mediated by between-person differences in perceived control. Empirical tests of between-person differences, however, may not represent within-person associations. As such, the present study utilized longitudinal data from the Notre Dame Study of Health & Well-being (NDHWB; N = 1,017) to examine concurrent, within-person associations among three R/S dimensions (i.e., religious coping, religious practices, and spirituality), control beliefs, and subjective well-being. Results from our Bayesian multilevel mediation analyses showed significant within-person associations among these constructs, suggesting potential bidirectionality and circularity in these processes. Cross-sectional age differences and time significantly moderated these associations. In terms of age differences, younger, compared to older, individuals showed stronger positive associations among religious coping and spirituality, control beliefs, and subjective well-being and more negative associations among religious practices, control beliefs, and subjective well-being. Contrarily, the effect of time implied that the relationships among religious coping and spirituality, control beliefs, and subjective well-being became more positive across time. Given this disjunction and that the moderating effect of cross-sectional age by time was not significant, cross-sectional age differences in these relationships likely reflect generational differences in the associations among R/S, control beliefs, and subjective well-being. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

The positive and negative affect relation in the context of stress and age.

Research suggests that the within-person inverse relationship between negative affect (NA) and positive affect (PA) indicates poorer emotional well-being, and this interaffect correlation fluctuates in relation to the context of the individual. Specifically, age, stress, and global PA all relate to changes in the interaffect correlation. The current study used comprehensive data from the Notre Dame Study of Health and Well-Being, which allowed us to uniquely examine between-person differences in within-person change and variability in the interaffect correlation, thereby examining these constructs from a process-oriented perspective. Midlife and later-life participants (N = 965) completed daily questionnaires assessing stress, NA, and PA. Three-level multilevel models illustrated that the interaffect correlation becomes more negative during times of stress, adults with greater global PA experience a stronger inverse interaffect correlation during times of stress, and days of higher stress relate to a stronger inverse interaffect correlation for older adults compared to midlife adults. The findings illustrate the idiographic nature of these relationships and suggest that later-life adults and adults with high levels of global PA undergoing higher than typical stressful situations experience stronger inverse interaffect correlations. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Future Time Perspective in Mid-to-Later Life: The Role of Personality.

OBJECTIVES: Future time perspective (FTP), or the way individuals orient to and consider their futures, is fundamental to motivation and well-being across the life span. There is a relative paucity of studies, however, that explore its contributing factors in mid-to-later life, specifically. Therefore, uncovering which variables contribute to individual differences in FTP, as well as the ways these variables interact, is paramount to developing a strong understanding of this construct during this life-span stage. METHOD: This study used three data mining techniques (ie, elastic net, decision tree, and tree ensemble analyses) to simultaneously test several potential contributors identified in the literature, including the five-factor personality domains, several health indices, and age. RESULTS: Personality, especially neuroticism, extraversion, conscientiousness, and agreeableness, had the most influence on FTP. Age and health were not among the most salient FTP contributors in mid-to-later life. Furthermore, decision tree analyses uncovered interactive effects of personality; several profiles of neuroticism, extraversion, and/or conscientiousness were linked with differing FTP levels. DISCUSSION: Although the extant literature has indicated that FTP, age, and health are inextricably tied, these results indicate that there is more variability to be explained in FTP, perhaps especially when looking within specific age groups.

Daily Stress Processes in a Pandemic: The Effects of Worry, Age, and Affect.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: In March 2020, the World Health Organization declared the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) a pandemic. Given that such a global event might affect day-to-day stress processes, the current study examined individuals' daily stress reactivity and its moderators early in the COVID-19 pandemic. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: Two-level, multilevel models examined the daily relationship between perceived stress and negative affect, or stress reactivity, as well as the moderating effects of daily pandemic worry, age, and daily positive affect on this process. Participants included 349 individuals (age range = 26-89) from the Notre Dame Study of Health & Well-being who completed a 28-day, daily diary study at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. RESULTS: Older individuals were less stress-reactive than younger individuals. Within individuals, however, stress reactivity was buffered by daily positive affect and exacerbated by daily pandemic worry. Finally, although daily positive affect buffered daily stress reactivity, this effect was weaker on days individuals were more worried about the COVID-19 pandemic. DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS: The mobilization of positive emotion may be a promising avenue for buffering stress reactivity during the COVID-19 pandemic, although this may be limited on days individuals are particularly concerned about the pandemic.

Development of Generative Concern Across Mid- to Later Life.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: The development of generativity, or investment in the next generation, has been theorized about for decades. Extant empirical findings regarding generativity's trajectory, however, are mixed. Thus, the current study modeled the development of generative concern, or the extent to which individuals care for the next generation, across adulthood. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: The current study followed an accelerated longitudinal design, modeling generative concern's trajectory across the overlapping ages of 861 age-heterogeneous participants from the 10-year Notre Dame Study of Health & Well-being. Three models were fit to examine whether generative concern followed a linear, quadratic, or cubic trajectory across ages 40-84. The Final Model was tested for birth cohort effects to support the interpretation of developmental change. RESULTS: Generative concern followed an age-graded cubic trend across ages 40-84, and no birth cohort effects were apparent in this trajectory. Generative concern was highest at age 40. Although generative concern declined thereafter, it remained relatively stable across ages 50-70. Finally, generative concern declined after age 70. DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS: Generative concern, indeed, develops over time. The step-like declines across ages 40-84 are informative for both basic and applied researchers in that knowledge of this developmental trend bolsters decade-old theory and informs the optimal timing for intervention work.

The bidirectional relationship between physical health and memory.

Individuals typically experience changes in physical health and cognitive ability across the life span. Although these constructs dynamically relate to one another, the temporal ordering of dynamic changes in physical health and cognitive ability is not well-established. Therefore, we examined the temporal ordering of the dynamic, bidirectional relationship between physical health and memory across ages 50-87 with Bivariate Dual Change Score Models (BDCSM). Employing a model-comparison approach, we tested whether inclusion of specific directional coupling parameters resulted in a meaningful improvement in model fit, controlling for education, gender, and race. The current sample included 9,103 individuals who participated in Waves 4-11 (1998-2012) of the Health and Retirement Study. Results indicated that both memory and physical health declined across ages 50-87. Furthermore, level of memory at a given time point was positively associated with subsequent change in physical health, meaning higher memory was linked to less decline in physical health by the subsequent time point. The opposite effect, namely physical health predicting memory, was much weaker. Age differences were also evident in the bidirectional coupling model, indicating that old-old individuals (i.e., ages 75-87) exhibited a much stronger coupling effect from memory to change in physical health than younger individuals (i.e., ages 50-74). In conclusion, memory buffers decline in physical health across mid-to-later life, and this effect is especially strong at older ages. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).