Stress begets stress: Three studies of the daily behavioral and affective mechanisms of spillover

The studies that make up this dissertation adopt process-oriented approaches to examine the mechanisms by which daily stressors result in disruptions to interpersonal relationships. To do so, all three studies made use of daily diaries or momentary survey assessment techniques to measure changes in stressors, cognition, behavior and affect across multiple time points. Each study also examined individual- and couple-level factors that were hypothesized to affect recovery from stressful events. The first study examined the day-to-day effects of difficult, highly demanding days on marital behavior over the course of 56 days in a diverse sample of 47 couples. The behaviors measured were marital anger and two types of withdrawal: hostile withdrawal and reductions in affection and disclosure, or “retreat.” A self-reported desire to withdraw from the family explained increases in marital anger, hostile withdrawal and retreat when participants experienced overload; negative mood, however, only explained increases in marital anger and hostile withdrawal. Husbands’ tendency to express anger or retreat on overloaded days was associated with poorer overall marital satisfaction. Using the same sample of 47 families, the second study examined the interaction between parents’ daily conflicts with each other and with their children. Marital conflicts predicted increases in negative parenting behavior, and parent-child conflicts predicted increases in marital anger. Negative mood partially mediated the majority of these associations, suggesting that additional variables may exist that explain the transfer or “spillover” of conflict across family dyads. Conflict spillover was exacerbated by children’s externalizing behavior and fathers’ neuroticism. The third study tested the hypothesis that certain emotional and behavioral responses to stressors impact whether individuals will go on to generate new stressors—specifically, interpersonal difficulties—in a sample of 137 college students. By assessing stressor occurrence, mood and behavior four times a day for five days, this study found that strong negative emotional reactions to stressors increased the likelihood of interpersonal problems later that day. This was particularly true when individuals engaged in avoidance while experiencing severe distress. Individuals with poorer psychological functioning reported more interpersonal stressors overall, but were not more likely to generate interpersonal stressors immediately following stressful events