The role of awakening cortisol and psychological distress in diurnal variations in affect: A day reconstruction study.

Abstract

People often feel unhappy in the morning but better later in the day, and this pattern may be amplified in the distressed. Past work suggests that one function of cortisol is to energize people in the mornings. In a study of 174 students we tested to see if daily affect patterns, psychological distress, and awakening cortisol levels were interlinked. Affect levels were assessed using the Day Reconstruction Method (Kahneman, Krueger, Schkade, Schwarz, & Stone, 2004) and psychological distress was measured using the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (Antony, Bieling, Cox, Enns, & Swinson, 1998). On average positive affect increased markedly in a linear pattern across the day whilst negative affect decreased linearly. For the highly distressed this pattern was stronger for positive affect. Lower than average morning cortisol, as assessed by two saliva samples at waking and two samples 30 minutes after waking, predicted a clear increasing pattern of positive affect throughout the day. When we examined the interlinkages between affect patterns, distress, and cortisol our results showed that a pronounced linear increase in positive affect from morning through to evening occurred chiefly among distressed people with below average cortisol levels upon awakening. Psychological distress, whilst not strongly associated with morning cortisol levels, does appear to interact with cortisol levels to profoundly influence affect.

The intra-day dynamics of affect, self-esteem, tiredness, and suicidality in Major Depression

“…Instead, our findings replicate the more pronounced quadratic MDD PA pattern found in Peeters et al (2006). The finding that 'morning-worse' mood in MDD is expressed via PA lows rather than NA highs is in keeping with recent research, which also found the 'morning-worse' depression pattern to be much more pronounced in PA than NA (Daly et al, 2011). Again, this emphasizes the prevalence and importance of PA dynamics in MDD.…”

“…MDD participants, however, showed a significantly steeper slope in PA over the day, with relatively lower morning and higher evening levels. These findings are similar to those of Daly et al (2011), where individuals with high levels of psychological distress had a more pronounced diurnal affective rhythm than those with low distress levels, characterized by much lower morning PA and somewhat higher morning NA. In contrast, Murray (2007) found a less distinct diurnal quadratic rhythm in PA in individuals with high depression levels compared to those with low depression levels.…”

“…Mata et al (2012) found no differences between MDD and control groups in the time-trend of either NA or PA. Peeters et al (2006) is the only study we are aware of that used a clinical MDD sample in its investigation of time-trends. Mata et al (2012) used a community sample that was diagnosed with/without MDD using structured clinical interviews, while both Murray (2007) and Daly et al (2011) used non-clinical samples (indeed, while the PA time-trend differed across high and low depression scorers in Murray (2007), mean levels in PA were not significantly different between groups). The nuances of differences in diurnal patterns of affect may only be apparent in individuals with clinically more severe MDD.…”

Demographic factors, temperament and the quality of the preschool environment as predictors of daily cortisol changes among Finnish six-year-old children

“…According to some previous studies, high cortisol values in the morning have been associated with distress and anticipation of a busy and potentially stressful day (Kunz-Ebrecht et al 2008;Thorn et al 2011). It has also been suggested that higher than average morning cortisol values predict an increasing pattern of negative affect throughout the day (Daly et al 2011). On the other hand, the absence of a morning effect has been linked to long-term overload of the system regulating stress and to increased developmental risk (Gunnar 2001;Chida and Steptoe 2009).…”

As cold as a fish? Relationships between the Dark Triad personality traits and affective experience during the day: A day reconstruction study

“…A series of multilevel analyses was conducted to assess bivariate relationships between the Dark Triad traits and momentary affect with the number of the episode (a level-1 predictor) as a control variable (within-person: y ij = β 0j + β ij (EPISODE) + r ij ) and each Dark Triad trait as a level-2 predictor (between-person: β 0j = γ 00 + γ 01 (Trait) + u 0j , β 1j = γ 10 + u 1j ). The number of the episode was chosen as a control variable because past research using the DRM showed that time of a day is an important predictor of positive and negative affect: across the day, positive affect increases and negative affect decreases [120,121]. Table 2 contains a summary of the analyses for momentary PA, momentary NA and affect balance.…”