Document Type
Article
Publication Date
7-6-2023
Abstract
Research has only begun to explore how affect variability relates to physical health and has typically not assessed long-term associations nor considered the moderating role of mean affect. Therefore, we used data from the Midlife in the United States Study waves 2 (N = 1512) and 3 (N = 1499) to test how affect variability predicted concurrent and long-term physical health while also testing the moderating role of mean affect. Results indicated that greater negative affect variability was associated concurrently with a greater number of chronic conditions (p = .03) and longitudinally with worse self-rated physical health (p < .01). Greater positive affect variability was associated concurrently with more chronic conditions (p < .01) and medications (p < .01) and longitudinally with worse self-rated physical health (p = .04). Further, mean negative affect played a moderating role such that at lower levels of mean negative affect, as affect variability increased, so did the number of concurrent chronic conditions (p < .01) and medications (p = .03) and the likelihood of reporting worse long-term self-rated physical health (p < .01). Thus, the role of mean affect should be considered when testing short- and long-term associations between affect variability and physical health.
Recommended Citation
Jenkins, B. N., Ong, L. Q., Lee, H. Y. (H.), Ong, A. D., & Boehm, J. K. (2023). Affect variability and physical health: The moderating role of mean affect. Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1111/aphw.12459
Supporting Information: Table S1. Supporting Information. Table S2. Physical Health at MIDUS II Predicting Negative and Positive Affect Variability at MIDUS III.
Copyright
The authors
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
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Comments
This article was originally published in Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being in 2023. https://doi.org/10.1111/aphw.12459