Social partners and momentary affect in the oldest-old: The presence of others benefits affect depending on who we are and who we are with.

Abstract

There are well-documented links between social relationships and emotional well-being in old age, but little is known about daily life fluctuations in momentary affective experiences of the oldest-old while interacting with specific social partners. We examined associations between the presence of different types of social partners and moment-to-moment fluctuations in affect in the oldest-old, taking into account individual differences in gender, neuroticism, depressive symptoms, chronic health conditions, and loneliness. Participants (N = 74, M age = 88.7 years, range = 84 -102 years, 68% women) provided self-reports concurrently on the presence of social partners and subjective affective states six times a day for each of seven consecutive days (3,071 occasions, in total). Relative to being with other people, time spent alone was associated with lower positive affect in the oldest-old. Being with other family members and friends was associated with more positive affective experiences. Compared to men, women reported more negative affective experiences when they were with their spouses than when their spouses were not present. Individuals with more chronic health problems reported more negative affective experiences when they were with their spouses than not. Participants higher in neuroticism reported more positive affective experiences when they were with their friends, compared to times when their friends were not present. Finally, lonelier individuals reported more positive affective experiences when they were with their spouses than not. These findings suggest that affective experience is a function of individual differences and the type of social partners oldestold adults interact with in everyday life. We discuss how our findings can be generalized to oldest-olds of different marital statuses taking into account the proportion of widows in our sample as well as measurement specifics.

How We Experience Being Alone: Age Differences in Affective and Biological Correlates of Momentary Solitude

“…Future studies are needed to test whether momentary solitude is also associated with more favorable experiences with greater age in less healthy and educated samples. It might be useful, furthermore, to compare solitude with different types of social interactions - for instance, by taking both the quality of the social interaction and the closeness with one's social interaction partner into account [15]. Finally, future work might extend this study by investigating relationships between solitude and markers of autonomic nervous system activity, such as heart rate or salivary α-amylase, to more thoroughly understand biological correlates of solitude along both of the body's main stress axes.…”

“…A number of studies have used repeated daily life assessments (‘time sampling') to examine time-varying associations between momentary solitude and affective states [3,5,15]. Findings suggest that individuals report less positive and more negative affect when alone as compared to when in the presence of other people [4,13].…”

“…happy/sad, cheerful/irritable) in adolescents, young adults, and middle-aged adults [3]. Momentary solitude has also been linked to less positive affect but not to more negative affect in the oldest-old (participants aged 84-102; [15]). Such findings are in line with the idea that affective experiences during solitude may differ across the adult life span and that momentary solitude might be experienced more favorably in old age.…”

Being Alone with Others: A Unique Form of Social Contact and Its Impact on Momentary Positive Affect

“…The existence of strong affect was most visible in situations when participants were around people closely connected to them. The highest PA in Study 1 was reported after participants talked to friends or family members, which supported existing research showing that, across cultures and in various age groups, being around and talking to family and friends leads to higher PA than being around co-workers, acquaintances, or strangers (Chui, Hoppmann, Gerstorf, Walker, & Luszcz, 2014;Coan et al, 2006;Cohen, 2004;Downie, Mageau, & Koestner, 2008;King & Reis, 2012;Mehl et al, 2010;Oishi, Napa Scollon, Diener, & Biswas-Diener, 2004;Vogel, Ram, Conroy, Pincus, & Gerstorf, 2017). However, being with people strongly connected to them but not talking to them, also resulted in participants reporting the highest momentary negative affect, although this difference was not statistically significant.…”

“…Since the participants of Study 1 were predominately young university students, the strong negative feelings when not speaking to strong-ties could have been a result of participants' conflicts with parents or other family members. Studies pointed out that among strong-ties, people reported more positive affect when being around friends than when interacting with their families, and this association becomes more prevalent as people mature (Chui et al, 2014;Csikszentmihalyi & Hunter, 2003;Larsen, Mannell, & Zuzanek, 1986;Mueller et al, 2019). This is understandable, since being with friends is predominately associated with leisure activities, an ability to choose those activities and one's companions, while being with family is often underlined by duties, routines, and not always being around like-minded people (Larson et al, 1986;Saphire-Bernstein & Taylor, 2013).…”