Costs and benefits.

Documenting Americans’ stress responses to an unprecedented pandemic and their degree of adherence to CDC guidelines is essential for mental health interventions and policy-making. To provide the first snapshot of immediate impact of COVID-19 on Americans’ stress, coping, and guideline adherence. Data were collected from an online workers’ platform for survey research (Amazon’s Mechanical Turk) from April 7 to 9, 2020. The current data represents the baseline of a longitudinal study. Best practices for ensuring high-quality data were employed. Individuals who are 18 years of age or older, living in the USA, and English-speaking were eligible for the study. Of 1086 unique responses, 1015 completed responses are included. Population-based. Exposure to and stressfulness of COVID-19 stressors, coping strategies, and adherence to CDC guidelines. The sample was 53.9% women (n = 547), with an average age of 38.9 years (SD = 13.50, range = 18–88), most of whom were White (n = 836, 82.4%), non-Hispanic (n = 929, 91.5%), and straight/heterosexual (n = 895, 88.2%); 40% were currently married (n = 407), and 21.6% (n = 219) were caregivers. About half (50.5%) endorsed having at least “mostly” enough money to meet their needs. Respondents’ locations across the USA ranged from 18.5% in the Northeast to 37.8% in the South. The most commonly experienced stressors were reading/hearing about the severity and contagiousness of COVID-19, uncertainty about length of quarantine and social distancing requirements, and changes to social and daily personal care routines. Financial concerns were rated most stressful. Younger age, female gender, and caregiver status increased risk for stressor exposure and greater degree of stressfulness. The most frequently reported strategies to manage stress were distraction, active coping, and seeking emotional social support. CDC guideline adherence was generally high, but several key social distancing and hygiene behaviors showed suboptimal adherence, particularly for men and younger adults. Americans have high COVID-19 stress exposure and some demographic subgroups appear particularly vulnerable to stress effects. Subgroups less likely to adhere to CDC guidelines may benefit from targeted information campaigns. these findings may guide mental health interventions and inform policy-making regarding implications of specific public health measures.

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Americans' COVID-19 Stress, Coping, and Adherence to CDC Guidelines.

Dispositional negativity-the propensity to experience and express more frequent, intense, or enduring negative affect-is a fundamental dimension of childhood temperament and adult personality. Elevated levels of dispositional negativity can have profound consequences for health, wealth, and happiness, drawing the attention of clinicians, researchers, and policymakers. Here, we highlight recent advances in our understanding of the psychological and neurobiological processes linking stable individual differences in dispositional negativity to momentary emotional states. Self-report data suggest that 3 key pathways-increased stressor reactivity, tonic increases in negative affect, and increased stressor exposure-explain most of the heightened negative affect that characterizes individuals with a more negative disposition. Of these 3 pathways, tonically elevated, indiscriminate negative affect appears to be most central to daily life and most relevant to the development of psychopathology. New behavioral and biological data provide insights into the neural systems underlying these 3 pathways and motivate the hypothesis that seemingly "tonic" increases in negative affect may actually reflect increased reactivity to stressors that are remote, uncertain, or diffuse. Research focused on humans, monkeys, and rodents suggests that this indiscriminate negative affect reflects trait-like variation in the activity and connectivity of several key brain regions, including the central extended amygdala and parts of the prefrontal cortex. Collectively, these observations provide an integrative psychobiological framework for understanding the dynamic cascade of processes that bind emotional traits to emotional states and, ultimately, to emotional disorders and other kinds of adverse outcomes. (PsycINFO Database Record

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Dispositional negativity: An integrative psychological and neurobiological perspective

Social relationships are often touted as critical for well-being. However, the vast majority of studies on social relationships have relied on self-report measures of both social interactions and well-being, which makes it difficult to disentangle true associations from shared method variance. To address this gap, we assessed the quantity and quality of social interactions using both self-report and observer-based measures in everyday life. Participants (N = 256; 3,206 observations) wore the Electronically Activated Recorder (EAR), an unobtrusive audio recorder, and completed experience sampling method self-reports of their momentary social interactions, happiness, and feelings of social connectedness, 4 times each day for 1 week. Observers rated the quantity and quality of participants' social interactions based on the EAR recordings from the same time points. Quantity of social interactions was robustly associated with greater well-being in the moment and on average, whether they were measured with self-reports or observer reports. Conversational (conversational depth and self-disclosure) and relational (knowing and liking one's interaction partners) aspects of social interaction quality were also generally associated with greater well-being, but the effects were larger and more consistent for self-reported (vs. observer-reported) quality variables, within-person (vs. between-person) associations, and for predicting social connectedness (vs. happiness). Finally, although most associations were similar for introverts and extraverts, our exploratory results suggest that introverts may experience greater boosts in social connectedness, relative to extraverts, when engaging in deeper conversations. This study provides compelling multimethod evidence supporting the link between more frequent and deeper social interactions and well-being. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Is well-being associated with the quantity and quality of social interactions?

Emotion expression is critical for the communication of important social information, such as emotional states and behavioral intentions. However, people tend to vary in their level of emotional expression. This meta-analysis investigated the relationships between levels of emotion expression and suppression, and social and interpersonal outcomes. PsycINFO databases, as well as reference lists were searched. Forty-three papers from a total of 3,200 papers met inclusion criteria, allowing for 105 effect sizes to be calculated. Meta-analyses revealed that greater suppression of emotion was significantly associated with poorer social wellbeing, including more negative first impressions, lower social support, lower social satisfaction and quality, and poorer romantic relationship quality. Furthermore, the expression of positive and general/nonspecific emotion was related to better social outcomes, while the expression of anger was associated with poorer social wellbeing. Expression of negative emotion generally was also associated with poorer social outcomes, although this effect size was very small and consisted of mixed results. These findings highlight the importance of considering the role that regulation of emotional expression can play in the development of social dysfunction and interpersonal problems. (PsycINFO Database Record

Suppression and expression of emotion in social and interpersonal outcomes: A meta-analysis.

Who are the people who maintain satisfying friendships? And, what are the behaviours that might explain why those people achieve high friendship satisfaction? We examined the associations between p...

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Personality and Friendship Satisfaction in Daily Life: Do Everyday Social Interactions Account for Individual Differences in Friendship Satisfaction?:

In this paper, we argue that friendship should receive more attention in social/personality research. Here, we focus on our area of expertise, personality traits, and review the literature on how personality traits influence friendship formation, maintenance, and dissolution. Specifically, we examine how personality traits of the actor and partner influence friendship development (i.e., who is more likely to initiate and end friendships, and who is more likely to be the target of friendship initiation and termination). We also discuss dyadic effects, such as personality similarity, on friendship development. Throughout this review, we draw on the literature on personality and romantic relationships to identify the most important gaps in the literature on personality and friendships. Our review suggests that agreeableness has the most consistent effects on both romantic relationships and friendships, followed by neuroticism. Extraversion, conscientiousness, and openness to experience have all been shown to influence relationship development, but their effects are inconsistent. We end with a call for more research on friendship beyond the role of personality traits and suggestions for specific future directions.

On friendship development and the Big Five personality traits

It is widely appreciated that extraversion is associated with greater subjective well–being. What is not yet clear is what mechanisms relate the two. In two longitudinal studies, we explored whethe...

Kelci Harris

Papers

Is well-being associated with the quantity and quality of social interactions?

Personality and Friendship Satisfaction in Daily Life: Do Everyday Social Interactions Account for Individual Differences in Friendship Satisfaction?:

On friendship development and the Big Five personality traits

Why are extraverts more satisfied? Personality, social experiences, and subjective well‐being in college.

Supplementary materials to: Why has personality psychology played an outsized role in the credibility revolution?