Our findings suggest that activity diversity may play an important role in older adults' concurrent well-being and also in their long-term longitudinal improvements of well-being.

The present study examined if and how stressor diversity, the extent to which one’s stressor events are spread across multiple types of stressors, contributes to daily affective well-being through the adult life span. Stressor diversity was examined as a unique predictor of daily affect and as a moderator of stressor exposure and stressor reactivity effects. Analyses span two independent studies of daily stress: the National Study of Daily Experiences with N=2,022 adults, aged 33–85, assessed over T=8 days, and the Intraindividual Study of Affect, Health, and Interpersonal Behavior with N=150 adults, aged 18–89, assessed over T=63 days. Across both studies, older age was associated with less stressor diversity. Additionally, multivariate multilevel models indicated higher stressor diversity was linked with better affective well-being. Age, however, was not a consistent moderator of such associations. The combination of low stressor diversity and high stressor exposure is discussed as an operationalization of chronic stressors, and this combination was associated with particularly high negative affect and low positive affect. We believe further work will benefit from including both the frequency and diversity of stressor experiences in analyses in order to better characterize individuals’ stressor experiences.

Mixed evidence of age differences across general and daily control beliefs highlights how within-person processes may differentially contribute to well-being as individuals accommodate age-related strengths and vulnerabilities.

Background Despite the epidemiological associations between psychological stress, depression, and increased cardiovascular disease risk, no studies have examined the relation between naturally occurring psychosocial stressors and directly measured microvascular function in adults with major depressive disorder ( MDD ). We tested the hypothesis that young adults with MDD exposed to everyday psychosocial stressors would exhibit more severe impairments in endothelium‐dependent dilation ( EDD ) compared with: (1) healthy nondepressed adults ( HCs ); and (2) adults with MDD without acute psychosocial stress exposure. Methods and Results Twenty HCs (22±1 years) and 23 otherwise healthy adults with MDD (20±0.3 years) participated in the study. Participants completed a psychosocial experiences survey to document their exposure to any of 6 stressors over the preceding 24 hours (eg, arguments, work stressors). Red cell flux (laser Doppler flowmetry) was measured during graded intradermal microdialysis perfusion of acetylcholine (10 −10 to 10 −1 mol/L). EDD was expressed as a percentage of maximum vascular conductance (flux/mm Hg). Multiple linear regression was used to determine the associations between stress, EDD , and MDD . Adults with MDD reported a greater number and severity of psychosocial stressors compared with HCs (all P <0.05). EDD was blunted in adults with MDD ( HCs : 91±2 versus MDD : 74±3%; P <0.001). Exposure to any stressor was related to more severe impairments in EDD in patients with MDD (no stressor: 81±3 versus 1+ stressors: 69±5%; P =0.04) but not in HCs ( P =0.48). Conclusions These data indicate that exposure to everyday psychosocial stressors is associated with greater impairments in endothelial function in patients with MDD , suggesting a potential mechanistic link between daily stress and depression in increased cardiovascular risk.

Feature selection techniques permit researchers to choose measures that are maximally predictive of relevant outcomes, even when there are interactions or nonlinearities. These techniques facilitate decisions about which measures may be dropped from a study while maintaining efficiency of prediction across groups and reducing costs to the researcher and burden on the participants.