People engage in a multitude of different relationships. Relatives, spouses, and friends are mode... more People engage in a multitude of different relationships. Relatives, spouses, and friends are modestly to moderately similar in various characteristics, e.g., personality characteristics, interests, appearance. The role of psychological (e.g., skills, global appraisal) and social (e.g., gender, familial status) similarities in personal relationships and the association with relationship quality (emotional closeness and reciprocity of support) were examined in four independent studies. Young adults (N = 456; M = 27 years) and middle-aged couples from four different family types (N = 171 couples, M = 38 years) gave answer to a computer-aided questionnaire regarding their ego-centered networks. A subsample of 175 middle-aged adults (77 couples and 21 individuals) participated in a one-year follow-up questioning. Two experimental studies (N = 470; N = 802), both including two assessments with an interval of five weeks, were conducted to examine causal relationships among similarity, clos...
The authors informatively demarcate cues, characteristics, and classes of situations, but barely ... more The authors informatively demarcate cues, characteristics, and classes of situations, but barely address how they are linked to each other. I argue that more work is necessary on the associations between cues, perceptions, and classes. Consequently, all three groups of situational information possess shared and unique value for developing interventions and understanding personality-situation transactions. By doing so, I challenge the superiority claim of perceptions, and also point out methodological issues on how to improve the assessment of situations.
... Principles of Relationship Differentiation Franz J. Neyer, 1 Cornelia Wrzus, 2 Jenny Wagner, ... more ... Principles of Relationship Differentiation Franz J. Neyer, 1 Cornelia Wrzus, 2 Jenny Wagner, 3 and Frieder R. Lang 3 ... Page 3. Nonnormative Family Forms The diversity of family forms increased over the last decades (Allan, 2001; Harknett & Knab, 2007). ...
Bad moods are considered "bad" not only because they may be aversive experiences in and... more Bad moods are considered "bad" not only because they may be aversive experiences in and of themselves, but also because they are associated with poorer psychosocial functioning and health. We propose that people differ in their negative affect valuation (NAV; the extent to which negative affective states are valued as pleasant, useful/helpful, appropriate, and meaningful experiences) and that affect-health links are moderated by NAV. These predictions were tested in a life span sample of 365 participants ranging from 14-88 years of age using reports of momentary negative affect and physical well-being (via experience sampling) and assessments of NAV and psychosocial and physical functioning (via computer-assisted personal interviews and behavioral measures of hand grip strength). Our study demonstrated that the more individuals valued negative affect, the less pronounced (and sometimes even nonexistent) were the associations between everyday experiences of negative affect ...
Journal of personality and social psychology, Jan 13, 2015
People presumably choose and create their daily environments according to their personality. Prio... more People presumably choose and create their daily environments according to their personality. Prior research shows that, for example, more extraverted people engage more often in social situations, and more conscientious people engage more often in work-related activities compared with less extraverted or less conscientious people, respectively. The current study examined such personality-situation transactions in people's daily life. Based on the assumption that older people know themselves and their personality better than younger people, we investigated whether momentary and proximate personality-situation associations (i.e., changing from 1 type of situation into another) increase with older age. Three-hundred and 78 people aged 14 to 82 years described their Big Five traits and took part in a 3-week experience-sampling phase. Using mobile-phone based assessments in daily life, participants reported on average 55 times on their momentary situation. Multilevel modeling results...
We propose that a comprehensive understanding of age differences in affective responses to emotio... more We propose that a comprehensive understanding of age differences in affective responses to emotional situations requires the distinction of 2 components of affect dynamics: reactivity, the deviation from a person's baseline, and recovery, the return to this baseline. The present study demonstrates the utility of this approach with a focus on age differences in responses of negative affect and heart rate to an unpleasant emotional situation in 92 participants aged 14 to 83. The emotional situation was elicited with a social-cognitive stress task. Participants' negative affect and heart rate were measured throughout the task. Results showed that heart rate reactivity decreased, but heart rate recovery time increased, with age. In contrast, no significant age differences were observed in either reactivity or recovery for negative affect. These findings confirm that reactivity to, and recovery from, unpleasant emotional situations are distinct components of affect dynamics. They underscore the multidirectional nature of age differences in affective processes.
People typically want to feel good. At times, however, they seek to maintain or enhance negative ... more People typically want to feel good. At times, however, they seek to maintain or enhance negative affect or to dampen positive affect. The prevalence of such contrahedonic motivation has been related to simultaneous experiences of positive and negative (i.e., mixed) affect. We investigated the role that implicit mental representations of affect valence may play in this regard in a study with N = 400 participants aged 11-88 years. Results demonstrated the age-fairness and reliability of the affect-valence Implicit Association Test, a newly developed implicit measure of interindividual differences in mental representations of affect valence. The older participants were, the more distinctively they implicitly associated happiness with pleasantness and/or unhappiness with unpleasantness. Participants furthermore carried mobile phones as assessment instruments with them for 3 weeks while pursuing their daily routines. The phones prompted participants on average 54 times to report their momentary affective experience and affect-regulation motivation. Contrahedonic motivation and mixed affect were most prevalent among adolescents and least prevalent among older adults, and thus showed a similar pattern of age differences as the affect-valence Implicit Association Test. Furthermore, the more distinctive participants' implicit associations of happiness with pleasantness, and/or unhappiness with unpleasantness, the less likely participants were to report contrahedonic motivation and mixed affect in their daily lives. These findings contribute to a refined understanding of the mixed-affect perspective on contrahedonic motivation by demonstrating the respective role of implicit affect-valence representations.
To better understand age differences in negative affective responses to daily hassles, the curren... more To better understand age differences in negative affective responses to daily hassles, the current study investigated how responses may depend on how much time has elapsed after the hassle and how much one still thinks about the hassle. In an experience-sampling approach with mobile phones, 397 participants aged 12 to 88 years reported their momentary activating (e.g., angry) and deactivating (e.g., disappointed) negative affect and occurrences of hassles, on average 55 times over three weeks. On measurement occasions when a hassle had occurred, participants also reported how long ago it occurred and how much they were currently preoccupied with thoughts about the hassle. Multilevel modeling results showed that, compared with more recent hassles, people across the entire age-range of the sample reported lower activating, yet higher deactivating, negative affect when hassles occurred a longer time ago. Age differences only emerged in situations when individuals were still preoccupied with a past hassle. In these situations, deactivating negative affect was higher with stronger preoccupation and more elapsed time after the hassles; these effects were more pronounced with older age. Activating negative affect was higher the more people reported being preoccupied with the hassle and this effect was also more pronounced with age. The results foster an understanding of age differences in negative affective responses to daily hassles by considering preoccupation with hassles and investigating activating and deactivating negative affect separately. We discuss under which circumstances affective responsiveness and age differences therein are more or less pronounced.
This series presents research findings based either directly on data from the German Socio-Econom... more This series presents research findings based either directly on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) or using SOEP data as part of an internationally comparable data set (e.g. CNEF, ECHP, LIS, LWS, CHER/PACO). SOEP is a truly multidisciplinary household panel study covering a wide range of social and behavioral sciences: economics, sociology, psychology, survey methodology, econometrics and applied statistics, educational science, political science, public health, behavioral genetics, demography, geography, and sport science.
This series presents research findings based either directly on data from the German Socio-Econom... more This series presents research findings based either directly on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) or using SOEP data as part of an internationally comparable data set (e.g. CNEF, ECHP, LIS, LWS, CHER/PACO). SOEP is a truly multidisciplinary household panel study covering a wide range of social and behavioral sciences: economics, sociology, psychology, survey methodology, econometrics and applied statistics, educational science, political science, public health, behavioral genetics, demography, geography, and sport science.
We investigated age differences in associations among self-reported experiences of tense and ener... more We investigated age differences in associations among self-reported experiences of tense and energetic arousal, physiological activation indicated by heart rate, and working-memory performance in everyday life. The sample comprised 92 participants aged 14 -83 years. Data were collected for 24 hr while participants pursued their normal daily routines. Participants wore an ambulatory biomonitoring system that recorded their cardiac and physical activity. Using mobile phones as assessment devices, they also provided an average of 7 assessments of their momentary experiences of tense arousal (feeling nervous) and energetic arousal (feeling wide-awake) and completed 2 trials of a well-practiced working-memory task. Experiences of higher energetic arousal were associated with higher heart rate in participants younger than 50 years of age but not in participants older than that, and energetic arousal was unrelated to within-person fluctuations in working-memory performance. Experiences of tense arousal were associated with higher heart rate independent of participants' age. Tense arousal and physiological activation were accompanied by momentary impairments in working-memory performance in middleaged and older adults but not in younger individuals. Results suggest that psychological arousal experiences are associated with lower working-memory performance in middle-aged and older adults when they are accompanied by increased physiological activation and that the same is true for physiological activation deriving from other influences. Hence, age differences in cognitive performance may be exaggerated when the assessment situation itself elicits tense arousal or occurs in situations with higher physiological arousal arising from affective experiences, physical activity, or circadian rhythms.
People engage in a multitude of different relationships. Relatives, spouses, and friends are mode... more People engage in a multitude of different relationships. Relatives, spouses, and friends are modestly to moderately similar in various characteristics, e.g., personality characteristics, interests, appearance. The role of psychological (e.g., skills, global appraisal) and social (e.g., gender, familial status) similarities in personal relationships and the association with relationship quality (emotional closeness and reciprocity of support) were examined in four independent studies. Young adults (N = 456; M = 27 years) and middle-aged couples from four different family types (N = 171 couples, M = 38 years) gave answer to a computer-aided questionnaire regarding their ego-centered networks. A subsample of 175 middle-aged adults (77 couples and 21 individuals) participated in a one-year follow-up questioning. Two experimental studies (N = 470; N = 802), both including two assessments with an interval of five weeks, were conducted to examine causal relationships among similarity, clos...
The authors informatively demarcate cues, characteristics, and classes of situations, but barely ... more The authors informatively demarcate cues, characteristics, and classes of situations, but barely address how they are linked to each other. I argue that more work is necessary on the associations between cues, perceptions, and classes. Consequently, all three groups of situational information possess shared and unique value for developing interventions and understanding personality-situation transactions. By doing so, I challenge the superiority claim of perceptions, and also point out methodological issues on how to improve the assessment of situations.
... Principles of Relationship Differentiation Franz J. Neyer, 1 Cornelia Wrzus, 2 Jenny Wagner, ... more ... Principles of Relationship Differentiation Franz J. Neyer, 1 Cornelia Wrzus, 2 Jenny Wagner, 3 and Frieder R. Lang 3 ... Page 3. Nonnormative Family Forms The diversity of family forms increased over the last decades (Allan, 2001; Harknett & Knab, 2007). ...
Bad moods are considered "bad" not only because they may be aversive experiences in and... more Bad moods are considered "bad" not only because they may be aversive experiences in and of themselves, but also because they are associated with poorer psychosocial functioning and health. We propose that people differ in their negative affect valuation (NAV; the extent to which negative affective states are valued as pleasant, useful/helpful, appropriate, and meaningful experiences) and that affect-health links are moderated by NAV. These predictions were tested in a life span sample of 365 participants ranging from 14-88 years of age using reports of momentary negative affect and physical well-being (via experience sampling) and assessments of NAV and psychosocial and physical functioning (via computer-assisted personal interviews and behavioral measures of hand grip strength). Our study demonstrated that the more individuals valued negative affect, the less pronounced (and sometimes even nonexistent) were the associations between everyday experiences of negative affect ...
Journal of personality and social psychology, Jan 13, 2015
People presumably choose and create their daily environments according to their personality. Prio... more People presumably choose and create their daily environments according to their personality. Prior research shows that, for example, more extraverted people engage more often in social situations, and more conscientious people engage more often in work-related activities compared with less extraverted or less conscientious people, respectively. The current study examined such personality-situation transactions in people's daily life. Based on the assumption that older people know themselves and their personality better than younger people, we investigated whether momentary and proximate personality-situation associations (i.e., changing from 1 type of situation into another) increase with older age. Three-hundred and 78 people aged 14 to 82 years described their Big Five traits and took part in a 3-week experience-sampling phase. Using mobile-phone based assessments in daily life, participants reported on average 55 times on their momentary situation. Multilevel modeling results...
We propose that a comprehensive understanding of age differences in affective responses to emotio... more We propose that a comprehensive understanding of age differences in affective responses to emotional situations requires the distinction of 2 components of affect dynamics: reactivity, the deviation from a person's baseline, and recovery, the return to this baseline. The present study demonstrates the utility of this approach with a focus on age differences in responses of negative affect and heart rate to an unpleasant emotional situation in 92 participants aged 14 to 83. The emotional situation was elicited with a social-cognitive stress task. Participants' negative affect and heart rate were measured throughout the task. Results showed that heart rate reactivity decreased, but heart rate recovery time increased, with age. In contrast, no significant age differences were observed in either reactivity or recovery for negative affect. These findings confirm that reactivity to, and recovery from, unpleasant emotional situations are distinct components of affect dynamics. They underscore the multidirectional nature of age differences in affective processes.
People typically want to feel good. At times, however, they seek to maintain or enhance negative ... more People typically want to feel good. At times, however, they seek to maintain or enhance negative affect or to dampen positive affect. The prevalence of such contrahedonic motivation has been related to simultaneous experiences of positive and negative (i.e., mixed) affect. We investigated the role that implicit mental representations of affect valence may play in this regard in a study with N = 400 participants aged 11-88 years. Results demonstrated the age-fairness and reliability of the affect-valence Implicit Association Test, a newly developed implicit measure of interindividual differences in mental representations of affect valence. The older participants were, the more distinctively they implicitly associated happiness with pleasantness and/or unhappiness with unpleasantness. Participants furthermore carried mobile phones as assessment instruments with them for 3 weeks while pursuing their daily routines. The phones prompted participants on average 54 times to report their momentary affective experience and affect-regulation motivation. Contrahedonic motivation and mixed affect were most prevalent among adolescents and least prevalent among older adults, and thus showed a similar pattern of age differences as the affect-valence Implicit Association Test. Furthermore, the more distinctive participants' implicit associations of happiness with pleasantness, and/or unhappiness with unpleasantness, the less likely participants were to report contrahedonic motivation and mixed affect in their daily lives. These findings contribute to a refined understanding of the mixed-affect perspective on contrahedonic motivation by demonstrating the respective role of implicit affect-valence representations.
To better understand age differences in negative affective responses to daily hassles, the curren... more To better understand age differences in negative affective responses to daily hassles, the current study investigated how responses may depend on how much time has elapsed after the hassle and how much one still thinks about the hassle. In an experience-sampling approach with mobile phones, 397 participants aged 12 to 88 years reported their momentary activating (e.g., angry) and deactivating (e.g., disappointed) negative affect and occurrences of hassles, on average 55 times over three weeks. On measurement occasions when a hassle had occurred, participants also reported how long ago it occurred and how much they were currently preoccupied with thoughts about the hassle. Multilevel modeling results showed that, compared with more recent hassles, people across the entire age-range of the sample reported lower activating, yet higher deactivating, negative affect when hassles occurred a longer time ago. Age differences only emerged in situations when individuals were still preoccupied with a past hassle. In these situations, deactivating negative affect was higher with stronger preoccupation and more elapsed time after the hassles; these effects were more pronounced with older age. Activating negative affect was higher the more people reported being preoccupied with the hassle and this effect was also more pronounced with age. The results foster an understanding of age differences in negative affective responses to daily hassles by considering preoccupation with hassles and investigating activating and deactivating negative affect separately. We discuss under which circumstances affective responsiveness and age differences therein are more or less pronounced.
This series presents research findings based either directly on data from the German Socio-Econom... more This series presents research findings based either directly on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) or using SOEP data as part of an internationally comparable data set (e.g. CNEF, ECHP, LIS, LWS, CHER/PACO). SOEP is a truly multidisciplinary household panel study covering a wide range of social and behavioral sciences: economics, sociology, psychology, survey methodology, econometrics and applied statistics, educational science, political science, public health, behavioral genetics, demography, geography, and sport science.
This series presents research findings based either directly on data from the German Socio-Econom... more This series presents research findings based either directly on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) or using SOEP data as part of an internationally comparable data set (e.g. CNEF, ECHP, LIS, LWS, CHER/PACO). SOEP is a truly multidisciplinary household panel study covering a wide range of social and behavioral sciences: economics, sociology, psychology, survey methodology, econometrics and applied statistics, educational science, political science, public health, behavioral genetics, demography, geography, and sport science.
We investigated age differences in associations among self-reported experiences of tense and ener... more We investigated age differences in associations among self-reported experiences of tense and energetic arousal, physiological activation indicated by heart rate, and working-memory performance in everyday life. The sample comprised 92 participants aged 14 -83 years. Data were collected for 24 hr while participants pursued their normal daily routines. Participants wore an ambulatory biomonitoring system that recorded their cardiac and physical activity. Using mobile phones as assessment devices, they also provided an average of 7 assessments of their momentary experiences of tense arousal (feeling nervous) and energetic arousal (feeling wide-awake) and completed 2 trials of a well-practiced working-memory task. Experiences of higher energetic arousal were associated with higher heart rate in participants younger than 50 years of age but not in participants older than that, and energetic arousal was unrelated to within-person fluctuations in working-memory performance. Experiences of tense arousal were associated with higher heart rate independent of participants' age. Tense arousal and physiological activation were accompanied by momentary impairments in working-memory performance in middleaged and older adults but not in younger individuals. Results suggest that psychological arousal experiences are associated with lower working-memory performance in middle-aged and older adults when they are accompanied by increased physiological activation and that the same is true for physiological activation deriving from other influences. Hence, age differences in cognitive performance may be exaggerated when the assessment situation itself elicits tense arousal or occurs in situations with higher physiological arousal arising from affective experiences, physical activity, or circadian rhythms.
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Papers by Cornelia Wrzus