Early Life Antecedents Predicting Adult Daily Affective Reactivity to Stress

当人们经历压力时，他们的积极情绪（如喜悦、兴奋、满足）往往会减少，而他们的消极情绪（如焦虑、沮丧和愤怒）往往会增加。然而，人们的情绪随压力变化的程度是不同的。这被称为“对压力的日常情感反应”。更强烈的情感反应与糟糕的结果有关，包括更差的幸福感，更高的精神和身体健康问题风险，以及更早死亡。该项目调查童年时期的经历，如遭受虐待和压力或接受高质量的养育，是否以及如何预测成年后对压力的日常情感反应。该项目还调查了成年期应对策略的使用，如寻求支持、锻炼、使用药物或酒精，可能会改变或解释童年经历与成年期对压力的日常情感反应之间的联系。这项研究为设计有效的干预措施提供了依据，帮助人们建设性地应对日常压力。该项目建立在明尼苏达州风险与适应纵向研究的基础上，这是一项纵向研究，对出生在贫困家庭的人进行了50多年的跟踪调查。现在，对50岁的参与者，这个项目让他们完成14项日常调查，反映每天发生的压力事件，以及他们在积极和消极影响、寻求支持、物质使用和锻炼方面的反应。这些数据被用来测试早期经历是否能预测日常对压力的情感反应，通过观察在参与者婴儿期和儿童期收集的虐待、生活压力和母亲敏感性的测量。两个相互竞争的理论模型如何早期的经验塑造成人的压力反应进行了测试。压力敏化模型提出，早期不良经历导致成年后对压力源的反应更强，而积极的早期经历具有保护作用。压力接种模型提出，早期逆境非常高或非常低的个体在成年后对压力的反应更强，而早期逆境中等的个体对压力的反应更弱。对调节和中介效应的详细分析决定了在应对压力时寻求支持、锻炼和物质使用的倾向是否会改变，或者解释了早期经历与日常压力情感反应之间的联系。结果与干预和政策组织共享，以鼓励应用。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

When people experience stress, their positive emotions (e.g., joy, excitement, contentment) often decrease, and their negative emotions (e.g., anxiety, frustration, and anger) tend to increase. However, people vary in how much their emotions change with stress. This is called "daily affective reactivity to stress." Having greater affective reactivity is associated with poor outcomes including worse well-being, higher risks of mental and physical health problems, and dying earlier. This project investigates whether and how experiences during childhood, such as experiencing maltreatment and stress or receiving high quality parenting, predict daily affective reactivity to stress in adulthood. This project also investigates how the use of coping strategies in adulthood, such as seeking support, exercising, or using drugs or alcohol, might change or explain the links between childhood experiences and daily affective reactivity to stress in adulthood. The research informs the design of effective interventions for helping people respond constructively to daily stress. This project builds on the Minnesota Longitudinal Study of Risk and Adaptation, a longitudinal study that has followed a sample of people born into poverty for over 50 years. Now, with participants at age 50, this project has them complete 14 daily surveys reflecting on the stressful events that occur each day and how they respond in terms of positive and negative affect, support seeking, substance use, and exercise. These data are used to test whether early experiences predict daily affective reactivity to stress by looking at measures of maltreatment, life stress, and maternal sensitivity that were collected during the participants’ infancy and childhood. Two competing theoretical models of how early experiences shape adult stress reactivity are tested. The stress sensitization model proposes that adverse early experiences lead to greater reactivity to stressors in adulthood, with positive early experiences having protective effects. The stress inoculation model proposes that individuals with very high or very low early adversity will be more reactive to stress in adulthood, and individuals who experience moderate early adversity will be less reactive to stress. Detailed analyses of moderation and mediation effects determine whether tendencies to engage in support seeking, exercise, and substance use in response to stress change or explain links between early experiences and daily affective reactivity to stress. Results are shared with intervention and policy organizations to encourage application.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.