Department of Psychology, Chapman University, Orange, California, USA.
Center on Stress & Health, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, California, USA.
Appl Psychol Health Well Being. 2023 Nov;15(4):1637-1655. doi: 10.1111/aphw.12459. Epub 2023 Jul 6.
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.
研究才刚刚开始探索情感变异性与身体健康之间的关系，通常没有评估长期关联，也没有考虑到平均情感的调节作用。因此，我们使用来自美国中年研究的第 2 波（N=1512）和第 3 波（N=1499）的数据，测试了情感变异性如何预测当前和长期的身体健康，同时还测试了平均情感的调节作用。结果表明，更大的负性情感变异性与更多的慢性疾病同时存在相关（p=0.03），并且与长期的自我评估身体健康状况较差相关（p<0.01）。更大的正性情感变异性与更多的慢性疾病（p<0.01）和药物治疗（p<0.01）同时存在相关，并且与长期的自我评估身体健康状况较差相关（p=0.04）。此外，平均负性情感起到了调节作用，即当平均负性情感水平较低时，随着情感变异性的增加，当前的慢性疾病数量（p<0.01）和药物治疗（p=0.03）以及报告长期自我评估身体健康状况较差的可能性（p<0.01）也随之增加。因此，在测试情感变异性与身体健康之间的短期和长期关联时，应该考虑平均情感的作用。
