What Makes Life Go Well? A Network Topic Modeling Analysis of Well-Being Practices in Adults with Chronic Pain.

Objective: This study leverages natural language processing techniques to identify specific practices older adults with chronic pain adopt to enhance well-being.

Method: We applied network topic modeling to open-ended survey responses from 683 adults (57% female) who reported experiencing chronic pain in the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) study, analyzing responses to the question "What do you do to make your life go well?" Structural equation modeling was used to examine the relationships between identified topics and measures of pain interference and prescription pain medication use, adjusting for sociodemographics and well-being indicators.

Results: The analyses revealed twelve key topics, including avoiding stress, maintaining social connections, and practicing spirituality and faith.

Affect dynamics and depressive symptomatology: Revisiting the inertia-instability paradox.

The inertia-instability paradox poses an intriguing question in depression research: How can the affective experiences of depressed individuals demonstrate both resistance to change and fluctuation? Prior studies examining this paradox have faced limitations, including small sample sizes, analytic approaches prone to biased parameter estimates, and inconsistent results. Using data from 842 adults ( = 54.31, = 13.

Loneliness Trajectories in U.S. Military Veterans: A 3-Year Longitudinal Study of Risk and Protective Factors.

Objectives: Loneliness is a significant public health concern associated with adverse mental and physical health outcomes in older adults. This study examined the nature and correlates of predominant loneliness trajectories in a nationally representative sample of older U.S.

Mean Affect Moderates the Association between Affect Variability and Mental Health.

Unlabelled: Increasing evidence suggests that within-person variation in affect is a dimension distinct from mean levels along which individuals can be characterized. This study investigated affect variability's association with concurrent and longitudinal mental health and how mean affect levels moderate these associations. The mental health outcomes of depression, panic disorder, self-rated mental health, and mental health professional visits from the second and third waves of the Midlife in the United States Study were used for cross-sectional ( = 1,676) and longitudinal outcomes ( = 1,271), respectively.

Variety in Pleasant Activities is Associated with Improved Mental Health: Evidence from Two National Samples of U.S. Adults.

Unlabelled: Engaging in a wide range of pleasant activities may provide mental health benefits, particularly for those genetically predisposed to depression. This study examined associations between pleasant activity variety, mental health, and genetic vulnerability in two U.S.

My partner really gets me: Affective reactivity to partner stress predicts greater relationship quality in new couples.

Affective reactivity, defined as within-person increases in negative affect triggered by daily stressors, has well-established links to personal well-being. Prior work conceptualized affective reactivity as an intrapersonal phenomenon, reflecting reactions to one's own stressors. Here, we conceptualized reactivity interpersonally, examining one's responses to a daily stressors.

Do We Become More Lonely With Age? A Coordinated Data Analysis of Nine Longitudinal Studies.

Loneliness is a pervasive experience with adverse impacts on health and well-being. Despite its significance, notable gaps impede a full understanding of how loneliness changes across the adult life span and what factors influence these changes. To address this, we conducted a coordinated data analysis of nine longitudinal studies encompassing 128,118 participants ages 13 to 103 from over 20 countries.

Engagement with nature and proinflammatory biology.

Background: Prior evidence indicates that contact with nature improves physical health, but data explicitly linking engagement with nature to biological processes are limited.

Design: Leveraging survey and biomarker data from 1,244 adults (mean age = 54.50 years, range = 34-84 years) from the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS II) study, we examined associations between nature engagement, operationalized as the frequency of pleasant nature encounters, and systemic inflammation.

Too little, too much, and "just right": Exploring the "goldilocks zone" of daily stress reactivity.

Hormetic models of stress resilience describe nonlinear relations for exposure to adversity and health outcomes, where exposure induces salutary changes up to a threshold, with changes becoming deleterious afterward. Here we apply a hormetic model of stress to reactivity to daily stressors, examining whether mental and physical health benefits arise from low-to-moderate reactivity but then decrease at higher levels. Data are from the second wave of the National Study of Daily Experiences (NSDE).

Trajectories of affective well-being and survival in middle-aged and older adults.

Affective experiences are key components of subjective well-being with important implications for health. However, little is known about heterogeneous longitudinal affect trajectories and their links to survival. This study identified joint trajectory subgroups based on 18-year changes in positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA) and examined their differential associations with mortality risk.

Associations Between Generativity and Social Asymmetry Among Older Adults in Japan.

Objectives: Loneliness and social isolation are major public health concerns among older adults in Japan. Generativity, the concern for and commitment to future generations, may buffer older adults from loneliness. This study examined the cross-sectional and longitudinal associations between generativity and social asymmetry (the discrepancy between social isolation and loneliness) among older adults in Japan.

Feasibility, Acceptability, and Preliminary Efficacy of a Positive Affect Skills Intervention for Adults With Fibromyalgia.

Background And Objectives: To examine the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary efficacy of a positive affect skills intervention for middle-aged and older adults with fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS).

Research Design And Methods: Ninety-five participants with FMS aged 50 and older (94% female) were randomized to 1 of 2 conditions: (a) Lessons in Affect Regulation to Keep Stress and Pain UndeR control (LARKSPUR; = 49) or (b) emotion reporting/control ( = 46). LARKSPUR included 5 weeks of skill training that targeted 8 skills to help foster positive affect, including (a) noticing positive events, (b) savoring positive events, (c) identifying personal strengths, (d) behavioral activation to set and work toward attainable goals, (e) mindfulness, (f) positive reappraisal, (g) gratitude, and (h) acts of kindness.

Affect variability and physical health: The moderating role of mean affect.

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 = .

For living well, behaviors and circumstances matter just as much as psychological traits.

In 2004 through 2016, three studies in the national Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) project asked participants the open-ended question "What do you do to make life go well?". We use verbatim responses to this question to evaluate the relative importance of psychological traits and circumstances for predicting self-reported, subjective well-being. The use of an open-ended question allows us to test the hypothesis that psychological traits are more strongly associated with self-reported well-being than objective circumstances because psychological traits and well-being are similarly self-rated-meaning that they both ask respondents to decide how to place themselves on provided and unfamiliar survey scales.

Five challenges for hope and resilience research.

Twenty years after Snyder's seminar article on hope theory, research on hope has moved in many directions and has spanned multiple spheres of personal life and social life, including psychological adjustment, physical health, lifespan development, and interpersonal relationships. Given its importance for well-being, it is somewhat surprising that a close look at the literature reveals that the question of whether hope is a source of resilience is far from resolved, and key questions remain unanswered. Here, we outline five challenges for future hope and resilience research, including conceptualization, measurement, research design, modeling methods, and multidirectional and multidimensional perspectives on adaptation.

Racial uplifts and the Asian American experience.

It is well established that experiences of racial discrimination pose a significant health risk to ethnic minority youth. In this article, we introduce a new concept, , to capture a largely neglected countertheme in the scientific literature-the nature and processes underlying salubrious race-related experiences. We report on data from a mixed-method study of everyday racial uplifts in the lives of Asian American youth.

The pandemic and social experience: For whom did discrimination and social isolation increase?

Objective: The objective of this study was to examine whether experiences of discrimination have increased during the pandemic, particularly among negatively stigmatized racial/ethnic groups, and whether such experiences have exacerbated feelings of social isolation.

Method: Discrimination and social isolation were assessed before and during the pandemic in a sample of 263 Black and White young adults attending a large, predominantly White 4-year research university in the Southeastern region of the United States (52% Black, 48% White, 53% female, mean age = 19.2).

Lessons in Affect Regulation to Keep Stress and Pain UndeR control (LARKSPUR): Design of a randomized controlled trial to increase positive affect in middle-aged and older adults with fibromyalgia.

Background: Fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS) is a leading cause of functional limitations and disability for which there is no cure. Positive psychological interventions for improving health have received increasing attention, but evidence of the feasibility, acceptability, and impact of such interventions in adult populations with FMS is limited.

Objectives: To describe the rationale and design of a 5-week, online positive affect skills intervention, LARKSPUR: Lessons in Affect Regulation to Keep Stress and Pain UndeR control.

The Relational Wear and Tear of Everyday Racism Among African American Couples.

The wear and tear of adapting to chronic stressors such as racism and discrimination can have detrimental effects on mental and physical health. Here, we investigated the wider implications of everyday racism for relationship quality in an adult sample of 98 heterosexual African American couples. Participants reported on their experiences of racial discrimination and positive and negative affect for 21 consecutive evenings.

Advancing the Study of Resilience to Daily Stressors.

Historically, studies of childhood and adult resilience have typically focused on adaptation to chronic life adversities, such as poverty and maltreatment, or isolated and potentially traumatic events, such as bereavement and serious illness. Here, we present a complementary view and suggest that stressors experienced in daily life may also forecast individual health and well-being. We argue that daily process approaches that incorporate intensive sampling of individuals in natural settings can provide powerful insights into unfolding adaptational processes.

Loneliness before and during the COVID-19 pandemic: A systematic review with meta-analysis.

The COVID-19 pandemic and measures aimed at its mitigation, such as physical distancing, have been discussed as risk factors for loneliness, which increases the risk of premature mortality and mental and physical health conditions. To ascertain whether loneliness has increased since the start of the pandemic, this study aimed to narratively and statistically synthesize relevant high-quality primary studies. This systematic review with meta-analysis was registered at PROSPERO (ID CRD42021246771).

Personality differences in the occurrence and affective correlates of daily positive events.

Objective: Previous research shows that Neuroticism predicts exposure and affective reactivity to daily stressors. Zautra and colleagues extended this work to daily positive events. Building on these frameworks, we examined the Big Five personality traits as predictors of the occurrence and affective correlates of daily positive events.

Racial Incivility in Everyday Life: A Conceptual Framework for Linking Process, Person, and Context.

Psychologists use the term to describe subtle forms of everyday racial incivility and discrimination reported by members of historically underrepresented groups. Growing evidence links self-reported experiences of racial microaggressions to health. Drawing on life-course perspectives on stress, biopsychosocial models of racism, and daily-process research, I propose a conceptual framework for investigating daily stress processes (e.

More than Hurt Feelings: The Wear and Tear of Day-to-Day Discrimination in Adults with Chronic Pain.

Objective: To examine the extent to which self-reported experiences of discrimination are associated with pain interference among men and women with chronic non-cancer pain.

Methods: Data are from the Study of Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) Refresher Cohort. The analytic sample consisted of 207 adults with chronic pain (54.