Person and contextual features of daily stress reactivity: Individual differences in relations of undesirable daily events with mood disturbance and chronic pain intensity.

Abstract

We examined the mood-related and pain-related consequences of daily stressors among 74 individuals with rheumatoid arthritis who supplied daily reports for 75 days. Meta-analyses of time series regression coefficients disclosed a significant same-day relation between events and mood but no consistent effects of events on same-day pain, next-day mood, or next-day pain. With distributional characteristics of the daily data controlled, Ss with more active inflammatory disease showed a greater positive relation of events with same-day and next-day pain, those with a recent history of more major life stressors showed a greater positive relation of events with next-day pain, and those with less social support showed a greater positive relation of events with next-day mood disturbance. Implications of these and other findings for theories of stress and adaptation and the methodological challenges of daily experience research are discussed.