The authors examined the influence of neuroticism (N) on the occurrence of different types of daily events, primary and secondary appraisals of those events, use of specific coping strategies, and end-of-day negative mood. College students completed questionnaires at the end of every day for 14 consecutive days. When reporting their most stressful event of each day, high-N individuals, compared with low-N individuals, reported more interpersonal stressors and had more negative primary and secondary appraisals and reacted with more distress in response to increasingly negative primary and secondary appraisals. Compared with low-N individuals, high-N individuals used less-adaptive coping strategies (e.g., hostile reaction) and reacted with more distress in response to some types of coping strategies. The appraisal findings, in particular, help to explain the chronic negative affectivity associated with neuroticism.

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Our findings highlight the potential value of focusing on genetic vulnerability in the context of everyday environmental triggers.

The authors used experience sampling to investigate biases in affective forecasting and recall in individuals with varying levels of depression and anxiety symptoms. Participants who were higher in depression symptoms demonstrated stronger (more pessimistic) negative mood prediction biases, marginally stronger negative mood recall biases, and weaker (less optimistic) positive mood prediction and recall biases. Participants who were higher in anxiety symptoms demonstrated stronger negative mood prediction biases, but positive mood prediction biases that were on par with those who were lower in anxiety. Anxiety symptoms were not associated with mood recall biases. Neither depression symptoms nor anxiety symptoms were associated with bias in event prediction. Their findings fit well with the tripartite model of depression and anxiety. Results are also consistent with the conceptualization of anxiety as a "forward-looking" disorder, and with theories that emphasize the importance of pessimism and general negative information processing in depressive functioning.

Daily affective reactivity refers to the within-subject relationship between daily stress and daily mood. Most stress researchers have conceptualized daily affective reactivity as a dependent variable to be predicted by individual difference variables such as personality and psychopathology. In contrast, in our recent research, we have conceptualized daily affective reactivity as an independent variable that can predict depressive symptoms. In this article, we summarize three studies that relied on a daily process methodology and multilevel modeling to assess affective reactivity in the context of daily stressful events. Two of the studies (Cohen, Butler, Gunthert, & Beck, 2005; Gunthert, Cohen, Butler, & Beck, 2005) sampled adult outpatients in cognitive therapy and evaluated the predictive role of daily affective reactivity in treatment outcome (depression reduction). A third study (O'Neill, Cohen, Tolpin, & Gunthert, 2004) evaluated the predictive role of college students' daily affective reactivity in the development of depressive symptoms. We consider the strengths and weaknesses of a daily process methodology for research on depression in both clinical and nonclinical samples.

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