Nilam Ram
Biographic Data
| ID | 158111 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Nilam Ram |
| GIVEN NAMES | Nilam |
| FAMILY NAME | Ram |
| SIGNATURE | RAM N |
| AFFILIATIONS | Pennsylvania State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1671-5257 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 119 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 472 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 118 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
Adolescents' daily affect predicts their mobile phone use (not the other way around)
Adolescence is a sensitive period of development marked by heightened affective reactivity and shifting sleep patterns. Yet how adolescents' daily emotional states and sleep intersect with their mobile phone use remains poorly understood, partly due to debates about directionality and the reliance on often cross‐sectional and self‐reported global measures of use. The present study advances the field by using objective, naturalistic data to differ…
Time-Related Considerations for Modeling Event-Based Data Collected via Ecological Momentary Assessment
Ecological momentary assessments (EMAs) and wearable devices afford opportunities to collect real-time data on events experienced in daily life. Examples of event-based data in the psychological and behavioral sciences include smoking a cigarette, experiencing a stressor, having a disruption to sleep, experiencing a depressive or manic episode, drinking an alcoholic beverage, or engaging in a bout of exercise. The increasing availability of dense…
Beyond apps: A method to model full distributions of screen content over time to study media effects
Research on smartphone media use has progressed from aggregate screen-time measures to app-level logs, yet these approaches still obscure the diversity and structure of the content users encounter. We introduce smartphone screen content patterns (content patterns) as a new construct and propose an analytical framework that represents smartphone use as distributions of experienced screen content rather than summaries of time spent on devices or in…
Free Your Mind and Mental Health and Wellbeing Will Follow: Evidence from Across-Day Within-Person Mediation in an Eight-Week Mindfulness RCT
Using Experience Sampling Methods to Study Identity Dynamics: A 5-Step Guide
A dynamic perspective on identity is essential for explaining how identities emerge, stabilize, and change across everyday situations. Mounting theory and evidence show that identity varies meaningfully from moment to moment. Experience sampling methods (ESM), a data collection method in which participants repeatedly provide researchers with information about their current or recent thoughts, behaviors, feelings, and contexts as they happen in re…
Longitudinal associations between adolescents’ smartphone distraction management during family time and their relationships with parents
Although smartphone distractions are common and impactful in adolescents’ lives, how adolescents manage these distractions remains understudied, particularly with respect to family relationships. This study examined the concurrent and time-lagged associations between adolescents’ frequency of smartphone distraction management (SDM) during family time and their relationship quality with their mother and father. The sample included 152 adolescents …
Tracking Divergence of Objective and Subjective Health Across Age and Historical Time
Influential work in the gerontological literature in the 1990s has demonstrated that the discrepancy between objective and subjective evaluations of health increases with age. It is an open question though whether the direction and size of the age gradient in the discrepancies has changed over historical time. In this study, we examine cohort differences in age-related divergences in health evaluations using two markers of objective health (illne…
Relationship transitions and well-being in middle-aged and older men and women
Previous research indicates that men suffer more from partner separation and benefit more from cohabitation and marriage in their well-being than women. Targeting middle-aged and older adults, this study investigated whether men’s well-being declines more strongly following separation and increases more strongly when moving in with a partner or marrying in later life. We also examined whether gender differences are linked to emotional support fro…
Mindfulness from me to we: A randomized control trial on the effects of an 8-week mindfulness intervention on mindfulness, well-being, mental health, compassion, and prosociality
97). The intervention was conducted online, via Zoom. Measures were completed pre-, mid-, and postintervention; principal component analysis of the surveys suggested the presence of four components, associated with measures of (a) mental health, (b) well-being, (c) compassion, and (d) lack of prejudice. We found larger beneficial change across time in mental health, well-being, and compassion for the mindfulness intervention group compared to the…
How are Conversations via an On-Demand Peer-To-Peer Emotional Well-Being App Associated with Emotional Improvement
Non-clinical, on-demand peer-to-peer (PtP) support apps have become increasingly popular over the past several years. Although not as pervasive as general self-help apps, these PtP support apps are usually free and instantly connect individuals through live texting with a non-clinical volunteer who has been minimally trained to listen and offer support. To date, there is little empirical work that examines whether and how using an on-demand PtP s…
Studying Daily Social Interaction Quantity and Quality in Relation to Depression Change: A Multi-Phase Experience Sampling Study
Day-to-day social life and mental health are intertwined. Yet, no study to date has assessed how the quantity and quality of social interactions in daily life are associated with changes in depressive symptoms. This study examines these links using multiple-timescale data (iSHAIB data set; N = 133), where the level of depressive symptoms was measured before and after three 21-day periods of event-contingent experience sampling of individuals’ int…
Variational Inference as Tractable Approximation for Bayesian Models of Psychological Change Processes
Bayesian modeling affords theoretically meaningful interpretations of parameter distributions, incorporation of prior knowledge, and elegant handling of missing data. Studying psychological process
Examining individuals’ protective behavioral decision-making dynamics over repeated risks of heat waves in the American West
Better together: Coexperienced positive emotions and cortisol secretion in the daily lives of older couples
An emerging body of research suggests that shared positive emotions predict health and longevity over and above individually experienced positive emotions. However, the extent to which relationship partners coexperience positive emotions in daily life remains poorly understood. Moreover, while laboratory research shows important distal effects of shared positive emotions on health and longevity, the extent to which positive emotions may "get unde…
Transforming Mortality Prediction: A Transformer-Based Mortality Prediction Model
Objectives Mortality prediction and the identification of mortality risks are central to social and biological sciences. Traditional models often assess linear associations between single risk factors and mortality. Transformer models, capable of capturing long-term dependencies across multiple variables, offer a novel approach to mortality prediction. This study introduces a transformer-based model applied to data from the Health and Retirement …
Contamination bias in the estimation of child maltreatment causal effects on adolescent internalizing and externalizing behavior problems
BACKGROUND: When unaddressed, contamination in child maltreatment research, in which some proportion of children recruited for a nonmaltreated comparison group are exposed to maltreatment, downwardly biases the significance and magnitude of effect size estimates. This study extends previous contamination research by investigating how a dual-measurement strategy of detecting and controlling contamination impacts causal effect size estimates of chi…
From Behavioral Genetics to Idiographic Science: Methodological Developments and Applications Inspired by the Work of Peter C. M. Molenaar
This special issue is a collection of papers inspired by Dr. Molenaar's work and innovations - a tribute to his passion for advancing science and his ability to ignite a spark of creativity and innovation in multiple generations of scientists. Following Dr. Molenaar's creative breadth, the papers address a wide variety of topics - sharing of new methodological developments, ideas, and findings in idiographic science, study of intraindividual vari…
Binding the Person-Specific Approach to Modern AI in the Human Screenome Project: Moving past Generalizability to Transferability
Advances in ability to comprehensively record individuals’ digital lives and in AI modeling of those data facilitate new possibilities for describing, predicting, and generating a wide variety of behavioral processes. In this paper, we consider these advances from a person-specific perspective, including whether the pervasive concerns about generalizability of results might be productively reframed with respect to transferability of models, and h…
A functionalist perspective of young children’s anger and sadness
Functional emotion theory defines anger as appraisal that a goal is blocked and readiness to act to overcome the obstacle-to approach, and sadness as appraisal that a goal is lost and readiness to relinquish effort-to withdraw. We test relations between these emotions and actions in young children during a blocked reward task, specifically associations in (a) anger and approach toward the goal, (b) sadness and withdrawal from the goal, and (c) gr…
Using State Space Grids to Quantify and Examine Dynamics of Dyadic Conversation
Developmental differences in young children's implied use of cognitive resources in their self‐regulation strategies
The emergence of self‐regulation during the preschool years is due, in part, to children's development of cognitive resources that can regulate their behavior. However, there is little direct evidence that age influences the extent to which young children's strategies involve such resources. We investigated age differences in the extent that young children's strategies imply cognitive resources. A sample of 154 children (77 girls; M age 45.15 mon…
Small Data Approaches to Link Faster Time Scale Engagement Dynamics with Slower Time Scale Outcomes in Biobehavioral Interventions
Can Social Media Engagement Predict Election Results? Bandwagon Effects of Tweets About US Senate Candidates
The social media platform X (formerly Twitter) has grown to become an important venue for political discourse, with candidates using it integrally in their election campaigns. However, it is not clear if activity on Twitter can be used to forecast elections, given conflicting findings in the literature. By analyzing 830,796 tweets mentioning key hashtags related to nine US senate races in 2014, 2016, and 2018, we demonstrate that cascades in volu…
Media Production on Smartphones: Analysis of the Timing, Content, and Context of Message Production Using Real-World Smartphone Use Data
Although media production is a critical concept in communication theory, we know surprisingly little about the timing, content, and context of individuals' production behavior. Intensive observation and analysis of 94 American adults' smartphone use over 1 week showed that although time spent in producing content was on average only about 6 percent of the amount of time spent on smartphones, the production content was more purposeful, expressive,…
Investigating the developmental timing of self-regulation in early childhood
Self-regulation often refers to the executive influence of cognitive resources to alter prepotent responses. The ability to engage cognitive resources as a form of executive process emerges and improves in the preschool-age years while the dominance of prepotent responses, such as emotional reactions, begins to decline from toddlerhood onward. However, little direct empirical evidence addresses the timing of an age-related increase in executive p…
Individual differences in boys' and girls' timing and tempo of puberty: Modeling development with nonlinear growth models
Pubertal development is a nonlinear process progressing from prepubescent beginnings through biological, physical, and psychological changes to full sexual maturity. To tether theoretical concepts of puberty with sophisticated longitudinal, analytical models capable of articulating pubertal development more accurately, we used nonlinear mixed-effects models to describe both the timing and tempo of pubertal development in the sample of 364 White b…
Life satisfaction shows terminal decline in old age: Longitudinal evidence from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (Soep)
Longitudinal data spanning 22 years, obtained from deceased participants of the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP; N = 1,637; 70- to 100-year-olds), were used to examine if and how life satisfaction exhibits terminal decline at the end of life. Changes in life satisfaction were more strongly associated with distance to death than with distance from birth (chronological age). Multiphase growth models were used to identify a transition point …
Taking a “Peak” at Leisure Travelers’ Positive Emotions
There is ample evidence to suggest that positive emotions lead to valuable life outcomes. This study examines daily positive emotion development before, during, and after a leisure travel experience. The study measured positive emotions on a daily basis in 25 mature adult participants before, during, and after two leisure travel experiences. Consistent with the “peak” model in previous research, positive emotions overall—and joy and interest in p…
Digital Trace Data Collection for Social Media Effects Research: APIs, Data Donation, and (Screen) Tracking
In social media effects research, the role of specific social media content is understudied, in part attributable to the fact that communication science previously lacked methods to access social media content directly. Digital trace data (DTD) can shed light on textual and audio-visual content of social media use and enable the analysis of content usage on a granular individual level that has been previously unavailable. However, because digital…
Age and time-to-death trajectories of change in indicators of cognitive, sensory, physical, health, social, and self-related functions
Mortality-related processes are known to modulate late-life change in cognitive abilities, but it is an open question whether and how precipitous declines with impending death generalize to other domains of functioning. We investigated this notion by using 13-year longitudinal data from now-deceased participants in the Berlin Aging Study (N = 439; 70-103 years at first occasion; M = 87 years). Using time metrics of chronological age and time-to-d…
Lability in the parent’s hostility and warmth toward their adolescent: Linkages to youth delinquency and substance use
According to family systems and life course theories, periods of intense change, such as early adolescence, can disrupt stable family systems, leading to changes in family relationships. In this longitudinal study, we investigate 2 types of change in parental hostility and warmth toward their children during early adolescence (Grades 6 to 8)-developmental trends (linear declines) and lability (within-person fluctuations around developmental trend…
Development and Lability in the Parent–Child Relationship During Adolescence: Associations With Pubertal Timing and Tempo
Adolescents' and parents' reactions to pubertal development are hypothesized to contribute to changes in family dynamics. Using 7‐year longitudinal data from the NICHD ‐ SECCYD (488 boys, 475 girls), we examined relations between pubertal development (timing, tempo) and trajectories (developmental change and year‐to‐year lability) of parent–child conflict and closeness from age 8.5 to 15.5 years. Changes were mostly characterized by year‐to‐year …
Cohort differences in cognitive aging and terminal decline in the Seattle Longitudinal Study
Life span researchers have long been interested in how and why fundamental aspects of human ontogeny differ between cohorts of people who have lived through different historical epochs. When examined at the same age, later born cohorts are often cognitively and physically fitter than earlier born cohorts. Less is known, however, about cohort differences in the rate of cognitive aging and if, at the very end of life, pervasive mortality-related pr…
Boredom Prone or Nothing to Do? Distinguishing Between State and Trait Leisure Boredom and Its Association with Substance Use in South African Adolescents
Reducing adolescent substance use is important in South Africa, a developing nation with increasing adolescent substance use, lack of leisure/recreation opportunities, and high rates of adolescent discretionary time. Previous research suggests leisure boredom and adolescent substance use co-occur in this setting. Using longitudinal data from 2,580 SA adolescents as they progressed from the 8 th to 11 th grade, the current study disentangles the a…
Age differences in emotion regulation strategy use, variability, and flexibility: An experience sampling approach
Life span developmental theories suggest that as individuals age, they accumulate knowledge about how to deploy emotion regulation (ER) strategies effectively and learn how to match their ER strategy use with changes in situational demands. Using an event-contingent experience sampling design wherein 150 adults Age 18 to 89 years reported on 64,213 social interactions (M = 427.41, SD = 145.66) during 9 weeks of daily life, this study examines (a)…
Age differences in negative emotional responses to daily stressors depend on time since event
Research on age differences in the experience of negative emotional states have produced inconsistent results, particularly when emotion is examined in the context of daily stress. Strength and vulnerability integration (SAVI; Charles, 2010) theory postulates that age differences in emotional states are contingent upon whether a stressor occurred, and whether sufficient time has passed since the stressor to allow older adults to benefit from theo…
Multidomain trajectories of psychological functioning in old age: A longitudinal perspective on (uneven) successful aging
Life-span developmentalists have long been interested in the nature of and the contributing factors to successful aging. Using variable-oriented approaches, research has revealed critical insights into the intricacies of human development and successful aging. In the present study, we opted instead for a more subgroup-oriented approach and examined multiple-indicator information of late-life change at the person level. We applied latent profile a…
Level and change in perceived control predict 19-year mortality: Findings from the Americans’ changing lives study
Perceived control plays an important role for health across adulthood and old age. However, little is known about the factors that account for such associations and whether changes in control (or control trajectory) uniquely predict major health outcomes over and above mean levels of control. Using data from the nationwide Americans' Changing Lives Study (House et al., 1990; N = 2,840, M age at T2: 56.32 years, range: 28-99, 64% women), we examin…
Changes in Depressive Symptoms in the Context of Disablement Processes: Role of Demographic Characteristics, Cognitive Function, Health, and Social Support
Our findings are consistent with conceptual notions implicating disability-related factors as key contributors to late-life change and suggest that contextual and psychosocial factors play a pivotal role for how well people adapt to late-life challenges
The storm and stress (or calm) of early adolescent self-concepts: Within- and between-subjects variability
This study uses intraindividual variability and change methods to test theoretical accounts of self-concept and its change across time and context and to test the developmental implications of this variability. The 5-year longitudinal study of 541 youths in a rural Pennsylvania community from 3rd through 7th grade included twice-yearly assessments of self-concept (academic and social), corresponding external evaluations of competence (e.g., teach…
Using Sequence Analysis to Identify Conversational Motifs in Supportive Interactions
This study demonstrates how sequence analysis, which is a method for identifying common patterns in categorical time series data, illuminates the nonlinear dynamics of dyadic conversations by describing chains of behavior that shift categorically, rather than incrementally. When applied to interpersonal interactions, sequence analysis supports the identification of conversational motifs, which can be used to test hypotheses linking patterns of in…
Associations Among Individuals’ Perceptions of Future Time, Individual Resources, and Subjective Well-Being in Old Age
We discuss our findings in the context of the Model of Strength and Vulnerability Integration
Analyzing developmental processes on an individual level using nonstationary time series modeling
Individuals change over time, often in complex ways. Generally, studies of change over time have combined individuals into groups for analysis, which is inappropriate in most, if not all, studies of development. The authors explain how to identify appropriate levels of analysis (individual vs. group) and demonstrate how to estimate changes in developmental processes over time using a multivariate nonstationary time series model. They apply this m…
Using technology to unobtrusively observe relationship development
Texting plays an increasingly important role in romantic relationships. Along with the increased use and impact of technology in and on relationships, technology provides new approaches to observe and study relationships. This study demonstrates the potential for using unobtrusive measures of texting obtained through mobile data donation for the study of communication behaviors during relationship development. In particular, we examine how textin…
Emotion socialization as a dynamic process across emotion contexts
Emotion-related socialization behaviors that occur during parent-child interactions are dynamic. According to Eisenberg, Cumberland, and Spinrad's (1998) model, ongoing parental reactions to emotions and discussions of emotion indirectly shape children's socioemotional competence throughout childhood and adolescence. Typically developing adolescents-girls especially-are at increased risk for developing internalizing symptoms. We examined if and h…
Adult development and aging in historical context
Human functioning and development are shaped by sociocultural contexts and by the historical changes that occur in these contexts. Over the last century, sociocultural changes such as increases in early life education have profoundly reshaped normative developmental sequences. In this article, we first briefly review how history-graded changes have influenced levels of objective performance and subjective evaluations among older adults and conclu…
Fusing Biodiversity Metrics into Investigations of Daily Life: Illustrations and Recommendations With Emodiversity
This study provides recommendations for the calculation of diversity-type IIV constructs and illustrates the potential for study of emodiversity to contribute to understanding of successful aging
Analyzing Dyadic Data Using Grid-Sequence Analysis: Interdyad Differences in Intradyad Dynamics
Methodologically, grid-sequence analysis extends the toolbox of techniques for analysis of dyadic experience sampling data. Substantively, we identify patterns of dyad-level microdynamics that may serve as new markers of risk/protective factors and potential points for intervention in older adults' proximal context
Daily physical activity and life satisfaction across adulthood
Physical activity is considered a valuable tool for enhancing life satisfaction. However, the processes linking these constructs likely differ across the adult life span. In older adults the association between physical activity and life satisfaction appears to involve usual levels of physical activity (i.e., a between-person association driven by differences between more and less active people). In younger adults the association has consistently…
Do New Romantic Couples Use More Similar Language Over Time? Evidence from Intensive Longitudinal Text Messages
The digital text traces left by computer-mediated communication (CMC) provide a new opportunity to test theories of relational processes that were originally developed through observation of face-to-face interactions. Communication accommodation theory, for example, suggests that conversation partners' verbal (and non-verbal) behaviors become more similar as relationships develop. Using a corpus of 1+ million text messages that 41 college-age rom…
Emotion as a Thermostat: Representing Emotion Regulation Using a Damped Oscillator Model
The authors present in this study a damped oscillator model that provides a direct mathematical basis for testing the notion of emotion as a self-regulatory thermostat. Parameters from this model reflect individual differences in emotional lability and the ability to regulate emotion. The authors discuss concepts such as intensity, rate of change, and acceleration in the context of emotion, and they illustrate the strengths of this approach in co…
Life satisfaction shows terminal decline in old age: Longitudinal evidence from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (Soep)
Longitudinal data spanning 22 years, obtained from deceased participants of the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP; N = 1,637; 70- to 100-year-olds), were used to examine if and how life satisfaction exhibits terminal decline at the end of life. Changes in life satisfaction were more strongly associated with distance to death than with distance from birth (chronological age). Multiphase growth models were used to identify a transition point …
Methods and Measures: Growth mixture modeling: A method for identifying differences in longitudinal change among unobserved groups
Growth mixture modeling (GMM) is a method for identifying multiple unobserved sub-populations, describing longitudinal change within each unobserved sub-population, and examining differences in change among unobserved sub-populations. We provide a practical primer that may be useful for researchers beginning to incorporate GMM analysis into their research. We briefly review basic elements of the standard latent basis growth curve model, introduce…
Time-structured and net intraindividual variability: Tools for examining the development of dynamic characteristics and processes.
The study of intraindividual variability is the study of fluctuations, oscillations, adaptations, and "noise" in behavioral outcomes that manifest on microtime scales. This article provides a descriptive frame for the combined study of intraindividual variability and aging/development. At the conceptual level, we show that the study of intraindividual variability provides access to dynamic characteristics-construct-level descriptions of individua…
Limitations on the Importance of Self-Regulation in Old Age
Commentaries| February 13 2009 Limitations on the Importance of Self-Regulation in Old Age: Commentary on Freund, Nikitin, and Ritter Subject Area: Psychiatry and Psychology , Women's and Children's Health Denis Gerstorf; Denis Gerstorf Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pa., USA Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Nilam Ram Nilam Ram Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pa., USA Searc…
Analyzing developmental processes on an individual level using nonstationary time series modeling
Individuals change over time, often in complex ways. Generally, studies of change over time have combined individuals into groups for analysis, which is inappropriate in most, if not all, studies of development. The authors explain how to identify appropriate levels of analysis (individual vs. group) and demonstrate how to estimate changes in developmental processes over time using a multivariate nonstationary time series model. They apply this m…
Nonlinear Structured Growth Mixture Models in M plus and OpenMx
and OpenMx computer programs. These models are fit to longitudinal reading data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort to illustrate their use
Emotional experience improves with age: Evidence based on over 10 years of experience sampling.
Recent evidence suggests that emotional well-being improves from early adulthood to old age. This study used experience-sampling to examine the developmental course of emotional experience in a representative sample of adults spanning early to very late adulthood. Participants (N = 184, Wave 1; N = 191, Wave 2; N = 178, Wave 3) reported their emotional states at five randomly selected times each day for a one week period. Using a measurement burs…
Nonlinear Growth Curves in Developmental Research
Developmentalists are often interested in understanding change processes, and growth models are the most common analytic tool for examining such processes. Nonlinear growth curves are especially valuable to developmentalists because the defining characteristics of the growth process such as initial levels, rates of change during growth spurts, and asymptotic levels can be estimated. A variety of growth models are described beginning with the line…
Conceptualizing and Estimating Process Speed in Studies Employing Ecological Momentary Assessment Designs: A Multilevel Variance Decomposition Approach
Researchers have been making use of ecological momentary assessment (EMA) and other study designs that sample feelings and behaviors in real time and in naturalistic settings to study temporal dynamics and contextual factors of a wide variety of psychological, physiological, and behavioral processes. As EMA designs become more widespread, questions are arising about the frequency of data sampling, with direct implications for participants' burden…
Changes in Depressive Symptoms in the Context of Disablement Processes: Role of Demographic Characteristics, Cognitive Function, Health, and Social Support
Our findings are consistent with conceptual notions implicating disability-related factors as key contributors to late-life change and suggest that contextual and psychosocial factors play a pivotal role for how well people adapt to late-life challenges
The storm and stress (or calm) of early adolescent self-concepts: Within- and between-subjects variability
This study uses intraindividual variability and change methods to test theoretical accounts of self-concept and its change across time and context and to test the developmental implications of this variability. The 5-year longitudinal study of 541 youths in a rural Pennsylvania community from 3rd through 7th grade included twice-yearly assessments of self-concept (academic and social), corresponding external evaluations of competence (e.g., teach…
Cohort differences in cognitive aging and terminal decline in the Seattle Longitudinal Study
Life span researchers have long been interested in how and why fundamental aspects of human ontogeny differ between cohorts of people who have lived through different historical epochs. When examined at the same age, later born cohorts are often cognitively and physically fitter than earlier born cohorts. Less is known, however, about cohort differences in the rate of cognitive aging and if, at the very end of life, pervasive mortality-related pr…
Individual differences in boys' and girls' timing and tempo of puberty: Modeling development with nonlinear growth models
Pubertal development is a nonlinear process progressing from prepubescent beginnings through biological, physical, and psychological changes to full sexual maturity. To tether theoretical concepts of puberty with sophisticated longitudinal, analytical models capable of articulating pubertal development more accurately, we used nonlinear mixed-effects models to describe both the timing and tempo of pubertal development in the sample of 364 White b…
Taking a “Peak” at Leisure Travelers’ Positive Emotions
There is ample evidence to suggest that positive emotions lead to valuable life outcomes. This study examines daily positive emotion development before, during, and after a leisure travel experience. The study measured positive emotions on a daily basis in 25 mature adult participants before, during, and after two leisure travel experiences. Consistent with the “peak” model in previous research, positive emotions overall—and joy and interest in p…
Linking Concurrent Self-Reports and Retrospective Proxy Reports About the Last Year of Life: A Prevailing Picture of Life Satisfaction Decline
Results qualify theoretical expectations and empirical results based on self-report data that are typically available 1 or 2 years before death. We discuss that retrospective proxy reports in panel surveys can be used as a hypothesis-generating tool to gather insights into late life
Within-person covariation of agentic and communal perceptions: Implications for interpersonal theory and assessment
Level and change in perceived control predict 19-year mortality: Findings from the Americans’ changing lives study
Perceived control plays an important role for health across adulthood and old age. However, little is known about the factors that account for such associations and whether changes in control (or control trajectory) uniquely predict major health outcomes over and above mean levels of control. Using data from the nationwide Americans' Changing Lives Study (House et al., 1990; N = 2,840, M age at T2: 56.32 years, range: 28-99, 64% women), we examin…
Multidomain trajectories of psychological functioning in old age: A longitudinal perspective on (uneven) successful aging
Life-span developmentalists have long been interested in the nature of and the contributing factors to successful aging. Using variable-oriented approaches, research has revealed critical insights into the intricacies of human development and successful aging. In the present study, we opted instead for a more subgroup-oriented approach and examined multiple-indicator information of late-life change at the person level. We applied latent profile a…
Age and time-to-death trajectories of change in indicators of cognitive, sensory, physical, health, social, and self-related functions
Mortality-related processes are known to modulate late-life change in cognitive abilities, but it is an open question whether and how precipitous declines with impending death generalize to other domains of functioning. We investigated this notion by using 13-year longitudinal data from now-deceased participants in the Berlin Aging Study (N = 439; 70-103 years at first occasion; M = 87 years). Using time metrics of chronological age and time-to-d…
Bursts of Self-Conscious Emotions in the Daily Lives of Emerging Adults
Self-conscious emotions play a role in regulating daily achievement strivings, social behavior, and health, but little is known about the processes underlying their daily manifestation. Emerging adults (n = 182) completed daily diaries for eight days and multilevel models were estimated to evaluate whether, how much, and why their emotions varied from day-to-day. Within-person variation in authentic pride was normally-distributed across people an…
The dynamic association between healthy leisure and substance use in South African adolescents: A state and trait perspective
South Africa has an increasing adolescent substance use problem, lack of leisure opportunities and resources, and high adolescent discretionary time. How aspects of leisure relate to adolescent substance use is not well understood. Little research has been conducted on the leisure behaviors and experiences of South African adolescents, if and how those behaviors are associated with substance use, and ecological influences on those associations. B…
Development and Lability in the Parent–Child Relationship During Adolescence: Associations With Pubertal Timing and Tempo
Adolescents' and parents' reactions to pubertal development are hypothesized to contribute to changes in family dynamics. Using 7‐year longitudinal data from the NICHD ‐ SECCYD (488 boys, 475 girls), we examined relations between pubertal development (timing, tempo) and trajectories (developmental change and year‐to‐year lability) of parent–child conflict and closeness from age 8.5 to 15.5 years. Changes were mostly characterized by year‐to‐year …
Interpersonal dependency and emotion in every day life
Comparing changes in late-life depressive symptoms across aging, disablement, and mortality processes
Developmental processes are inherently time-related, with various time metrics and transition points being used to proxy how change is organized with respect to the theoretically underlying mechanisms. Using data from 4 Swedish studies of individuals aged 70-100+ (N = 453) who were measured every 2 years for up to 5 waves, we tested whether depressive symptoms (according to the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale; Radloff, 1977) are…
Psychology (97 works) · Developmental psychology (67 works) · Social Psychology (42 works) · Computer Science (41 works) · Aging and Gerontology Research (35 works) · Social Psychology (32 works) · Medicine (30 works) · Health disparities and outcomes (29 works) · Mental Health Research Topics (26 works) · Psychological Well-being and Life Satisfaction (25 works)