Emily C Willroth
Biographic Data
| ID | 1732452 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Emily C Willroth |
| GIVEN NAMES | Emily C |
| FAMILY NAME | Willroth |
| SIGNATURE | WILLROTH E C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Washington University in St. Louis |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4780-6883 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 34 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 12 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 34 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Retrospective Perceptions of Life Satisfaction Change: Evaluation Strategies and Correspondence With Measured Change
Life satisfaction has been shown to change over time, but we know little about how people perceive those changes. In preregistered analyses, the current research investigated the degree of correspondence between people’s retrospective perceptions of life satisfaction change and their measured life satisfaction change (Sample A analytic N = 359; Sample B analytic N = 336). On average, retrospective perceptions of change were moderately correlated …
A Taxonomy of Data Synthesis
As efforts to improve the credibility of psychological and other social sciences continue, researchers aim to conduct multi-study or multi-sample research and synthesize findings using different parameterizations of individual participant meta-analysis. No overarching organizational framework exists, and only a few simulation-based or empirical examples comparing these parameterizations. This article has two goals. First, we provide an overview o…
Where Does Purpose Belong in Well-Being Theory?
Is purpose a cause, consequence, correlate, or component of well-being? Sense of purpose can be understood as the extent to which one feels that they have personally meaningful goals and directions guiding them through life. Because models of well-being differ in how they conceptualize what it means to be psychologically well, purpose is treated differently across these frameworks. In this chapter, we begin by considering how purpose fits in vari…
Purpose in Life As Ancient but Nascent: Perspectives from Psychology, Philosophy, and Human Development
Since the pandemic, many have been reflecting on their path, direction, and identity, all tied to a deeper question: What is one's purpose in life? Research reveals that understanding this purpose can significantly impact well-being, health, and personal development. This volume offers fresh insights by bringing together scholars from various fields to explore purpose from different angles. Each contributor delves into what purpose means and why …
Personality Trait Change Across a Major Global Stressor
The current research examined three related questions in a 21-month longitudinal study of a diverse sample of U.S. participants ( N = 504): (a) How did Big Five traits change during the COVID-19 pandemic? (b) What factors were associated with individual differences in trait change? and (c) How was Big Five trait change associated with downstream well-being, mental health, and physical health? On average, across the 21-month study period, conscien…
A coordinated analysis of bidirectional associations between life satisfaction and cognitive function
Life satisfaction is an important component of well-being to consider in relation to cognitive function due to its modifiability, potential utility in public health policy, and associations with cognitive health outcomes. However, little is known about the directionality of the association between life satisfaction and cognitive function, and past longitudinal work has yielded mixed findings. Using a coordinated data analytic approach, the curren…
Associations of personality trait level and change with mortality risk in 11 longitudinal studies
People who are higher in conscientiousness, extraversion, and agreeableness and lower in neuroticism tend to live longer. The present research tested the hypothesis that personality trait change in middle and older adulthood would also be associated with mortality risk, above and beyond personality trait level. Personality trait change may causally influence mortality risk through corresponding changes in health behaviors, social processes, and s…
Sense of purpose fluctuations in daily life: A study of young adults and cognitively diverse older adults
The current work uses ecological momentary assessment data in an age and cognitively diverse group of adults to explore if, when, and why individuals feel purposeful in daily life. Seven times per day for 9 days, young adults (age: M = 27.36; 51.4% men, 47.1% women, 1.4% additional gender; 7.0% Asian/Asian American, 28.6% as Black/African American, 1.4% as Indigenous, 5.7% as Latine/Hispanic, 1.4% Middle Eastern, 58.6% White/European American), o…
Social interactions and loneliness in daily life: A study of younger adults and cognitively diverse older adults
Feeling lonely is a common experience across the lifespan and people's feelings of loneliness often do not correspond with their levels of social interaction in expected ways (i.e., social asymmetry). It is unclear, however, whether loneliness in daily life differs by age or cognitive status and how loneliness varies as a function of social interaction across age and cognitive status. The present research used experience sampling to investigate g…
Changes in daily stress reactivity and changes in physical health across 18 years of adulthood
BACKGROUND: Stress plays a pivotal role in physical health. Although many studies have linked stress reactivity (daily within-person associations between stress exposure and negative affect) to physical health outcomes, we know surprisingly little about how changes in stress reactivity are related to changes in physical health. PURPOSE: The current study examines how change in stress reactivity over 18 years is related to changes in functional he…
Valuing Versus Having: The Contrary Roles of Valuing and Having Money and Prestige on Well-Being
Using data from Midlife in the United States ( N = 3,767), this study investigates how believing having money or occupational prestige is important for a good life is associated with different aspects of well-being. Actual income was positively associated with sense of purpose, personal growth, self-acceptance, environmental mastery, and life satisfaction; negatively associated with negative affect; and was not associated with autonomy, positive …
Rural–urban differences in personality traits and well‐being in adulthood
OBJECTIVE: One large focus of personality psychology is to understand the biopsychosocial factors responsible for adult personality development and well-being change. However, little is known about how macro-level contextual factors, such as rurality-urbanicity, are related to personality development and well-being change. METHOD: The present study uses data from two large longitudinal studies of U.S. Americans (MIDUS, HRS) to examine whether the…
A Longitudinal Investigation of the Association Between Stroke and Loneliness
This research adds to a growing body of evidence demonstrating elevated loneliness among stroke survivors and highlights the need for interventions to increase social connectedness after stroke
Values and stress: Examining the relations between values and general and domain-specific stress in two longitudinal studies
Stress experiences have been found to vary at both the interindividual and intraindividual levels. The present study investigated the concurrent and longitudinal associations between values and stress at both the between-person and the within-person levels. We considered multiple aspects of stress, including self-reported stressor exposure and perceived stress, as well as general and domain-specific stress. In Study 1, data were drawn from the Mi…
Longitudinal associations among the Big Five personality traits and healthcare utilization in the U.S
Psychological Resilience: An Affect-Regulation Framework
Exposure to adversity (e.g., poverty, bereavement) is a robust predictor of disruptions in psychological functioning. However, people vary greatly in their responses to adversity; some experience severe long-term disruptions, others experience minimal disruptions or even improvements. We refer to the latter outcomes—faring better than expected given adversity—as psychological resilience. Understanding what processes explain resilience has critica…
Judging emotions as good or bad: Individual differences and associations with psychological health
People differ in their initial emotional responses to events, and we are beginning to understand these responses and their pervasive implications for psychological health. However, people also differ in how they think about and react to their initial emotions (i.e., emotion judgments). In turn, how people judge their emotions-as predominantly positive or negative-may have crucial implications for psychological health. Across five MTurk and underg…
Well-Being as a Protective Factor Against Cognitive Decline and Dementia: A Review of the Literature and Directions for Future Research
OBJECTIVES: Treatments that target the biological causes of dementia remain limited, making prevention critically important. Well-being-defined broadly as living in accordance with one's potential and experiencing one's life as enjoyable and satisfying-is a promising avenue for prevention. It can be targeted by large-scale, noninvasive interventions and has been linked with better cognitive health and lower dementia risk. In the current review, w…
Associations Between Generativity and Social Asymmetry Among Older Adults in Japan
Generativity may play a protective role in buffering older adults from the adverse effects of social isolation on loneliness. Promoting generativity among older adults may be a potential intervention strategy to reduce loneliness and improve well-being in aging populations in Japan
Associations Between Loneliness and Cognitive Resilience to Neuropathology in Older Adults
Higher and increasing loneliness was associated with lower CR in the face of neuropathology. These results suggest that some individuals are less resilient to the accumulation of neuropathology than others, and experiencing high/increasing loneliness is a key factor putting some at risk. Interventions aimed at optimizing cognitive function across older adults should include loneliness reduction as a potential area of focus
Personality traits and health care use: A coordinated analysis of 15 international samples
358,803). According to the synthesized results, people higher in conscientiousness, agreeableness, extraversion, and openness, and lower in neuroticism were more likely to visit the dentist; people higher in neuroticism were more likely to visit general medical practitioners; and people lower in conscientiousness and agreeableness and higher in neuroticism were more likely to be hospitalized. Associations tended to be small with odds ratios aroun…
Short-term implications of long-term thinking: Temporal distancing and emotional responses to daily stressors
Temporal distancing (TD) is a promising yet understudied emotion regulation strategy that involves reflecting on how one will feel much later in the future. Although limited, the available evidence suggests that TD is a beneficial way to appraise negative events. Experimental studies have demonstrated causality: Situational use of TD (e.g., when thinking about a negative event) confers short-term emotional benefits in the laboratory. In addition,…
The Health Behavior Model of Personality in the Context of a Public Health Crisis
OBJECTIVE: The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended behavioral measures to slow the spread of COVID-19, such as social distancing and wearing masks. Although many individuals comply with these recommendations, compliance has been far from universal. Identifying predictors of compliance is crucial for improving health behavior messaging and thereby reducing disease spread and fatalities. METHODS: We report preregistered analys…
The Roles of General and Domain-Specific Perceived Stress in Healthy Aging
The current study provides strong evidence for the existence of a general perceived stress factor that captures variance shared among stress across life domains, and the general perceived stress factor demonstrated substantial prospective predictive effects on diverse health outcomes in older adulthood
A coordinated analysis of the associations among personality traits, cognitive decline, and dementia in older adulthood
Life satisfaction trajectories during adolescence and the transition to young adulthood: Findings from a longitudinal study of Mexican-origin youth
in life satisfaction from middle (age 14) to late adolescence (age 17), but not from late adolescence to young adulthood (age 21). This research extends the current understanding of life satisfaction during a critical developmental period in an understudied population. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)
Associations Between Personality Traits and Cognitive Resilience in Older Adults
Personality may have a pathoplastic effect on neuropathology, as low neuroticism and high conscientiousness are associated with better function despite neuropathologic burden
Understanding short-term variability in life satisfaction: The Individual Differences in Evaluating Life Satisfaction (Idels) model
Daily life is full of emotional ups and downs. In contrast, the objective conditions of our lives usually remain relatively stable from day to day. The degree to which emotional ups and downs influence life satisfaction-which prima facie should be relatively stable-remains a puzzle. In the present article, we propose the Individual Differences in Evaluating Life Satisfaction (IDELS) model to address this puzzle. The IDELS model posits that people…
A Longitudinal Investigation of the Association Between Stroke and Loneliness
This research adds to a growing body of evidence demonstrating elevated loneliness among stroke survivors and highlights the need for interventions to increase social connectedness after stroke
Longitudinal associations among the Big Five personality traits and healthcare utilization in the U.S
Personality traits and health care use: A coordinated analysis of 15 international samples
358,803). According to the synthesized results, people higher in conscientiousness, agreeableness, extraversion, and openness, and lower in neuroticism were more likely to visit the dentist; people higher in neuroticism were more likely to visit general medical practitioners; and people lower in conscientiousness and agreeableness and higher in neuroticism were more likely to be hospitalized. Associations tended to be small with odds ratios aroun…
Differential effects of self- and situation-focused reappraisal
In the present research, we investigated the effects of self- and situation-focused reappraisal, which are 2 distinct types of cognitive reappraisal, on emotion experiences, memory, and electrocortical responses to unpleasant pictures. In Study 1, situation-focused reappraisal was found to improve recall accuracy, whereas self-focused reappraisal had no effect. Both strategy types were associated with reductions in self-reported negative emotion,…
Social information influences emotional experience and late positive potential response to affective pictures
Emotion experience and regulation frequently occur in social settings. Social influence is a common source of unconscious change in judgment in many contexts, but it has yet to be investigated as a form of automatic emotion regulation. Here, we demonstrate that nonpredictive social information (i.e., high or low "emotion intensity ratings from other people" that were not related to the actual intensity of the pictures) about the intensity of plea…
Long-term economic benefits of psychological interventions for criminality: Comparing and integrating estimation methods
Understanding short-term variability in life satisfaction: The Individual Differences in Evaluating Life Satisfaction (Idels) model
Daily life is full of emotional ups and downs. In contrast, the objective conditions of our lives usually remain relatively stable from day to day. The degree to which emotional ups and downs influence life satisfaction-which prima facie should be relatively stable-remains a puzzle. In the present article, we propose the Individual Differences in Evaluating Life Satisfaction (IDELS) model to address this puzzle. The IDELS model posits that people…
Being Happy and Becoming Happier as Independent Predictors of Physical Health and Mortality
OBJECTIVE: The present study tested preregistered predictions regarding the prospective associations between level and change in subjective well-being (SWB) and physical health. METHODS: In two large longitudinal panel studies conducted in the United States (N = 3294) and Japan (N = 657), we used multilevel growth curve models to estimate level and change in components of SWB (i.e., life satisfaction, positive affect, and negative affect). Next, …
Depressive symptoms and deficits in stress‐reactive negative, positive, and within‐emotion‐category differentiation: A daily diary study
OBJECTIVE: The present research aimed to better understand deficits in emotion differentiation that accompany depressive symptoms. Depressive symptoms have been associated with more undifferentiated negative emotion experiences-experiencing multiple negative emotions simultaneously. We extend previous research by asking: (a) Are depressive symptoms and negative and positive emotion differentiation related above and beyond emotion intensity? (b) A…
Associations Between Personality Traits and Cognitive Resilience in Older Adults
Personality may have a pathoplastic effect on neuropathology, as low neuroticism and high conscientiousness are associated with better function despite neuropathologic burden
Comparing the predictive utility of trait affect and average daily affect for the prospective prediction of health outcomes
The Health Behavior Model of Personality in the Context of a Public Health Crisis
OBJECTIVE: The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended behavioral measures to slow the spread of COVID-19, such as social distancing and wearing masks. Although many individuals comply with these recommendations, compliance has been far from universal. Identifying predictors of compliance is crucial for improving health behavior messaging and thereby reducing disease spread and fatalities. METHODS: We report preregistered analys…
The Roles of General and Domain-Specific Perceived Stress in Healthy Aging
The current study provides strong evidence for the existence of a general perceived stress factor that captures variance shared among stress across life domains, and the general perceived stress factor demonstrated substantial prospective predictive effects on diverse health outcomes in older adulthood
A coordinated analysis of the associations among personality traits, cognitive decline, and dementia in older adulthood
Life satisfaction trajectories during adolescence and the transition to young adulthood: Findings from a longitudinal study of Mexican-origin youth
in life satisfaction from middle (age 14) to late adolescence (age 17), but not from late adolescence to young adulthood (age 21). This research extends the current understanding of life satisfaction during a critical developmental period in an understudied population. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)
Short-term implications of long-term thinking: Temporal distancing and emotional responses to daily stressors
Temporal distancing (TD) is a promising yet understudied emotion regulation strategy that involves reflecting on how one will feel much later in the future. Although limited, the available evidence suggests that TD is a beneficial way to appraise negative events. Experimental studies have demonstrated causality: Situational use of TD (e.g., when thinking about a negative event) confers short-term emotional benefits in the laboratory. In addition,…
Psychological Resilience: An Affect-Regulation Framework
Exposure to adversity (e.g., poverty, bereavement) is a robust predictor of disruptions in psychological functioning. However, people vary greatly in their responses to adversity; some experience severe long-term disruptions, others experience minimal disruptions or even improvements. We refer to the latter outcomes—faring better than expected given adversity—as psychological resilience. Understanding what processes explain resilience has critica…
Judging emotions as good or bad: Individual differences and associations with psychological health
People differ in their initial emotional responses to events, and we are beginning to understand these responses and their pervasive implications for psychological health. However, people also differ in how they think about and react to their initial emotions (i.e., emotion judgments). In turn, how people judge their emotions-as predominantly positive or negative-may have crucial implications for psychological health. Across five MTurk and underg…
Well-Being as a Protective Factor Against Cognitive Decline and Dementia: A Review of the Literature and Directions for Future Research
OBJECTIVES: Treatments that target the biological causes of dementia remain limited, making prevention critically important. Well-being-defined broadly as living in accordance with one's potential and experiencing one's life as enjoyable and satisfying-is a promising avenue for prevention. It can be targeted by large-scale, noninvasive interventions and has been linked with better cognitive health and lower dementia risk. In the current review, w…
Associations Between Generativity and Social Asymmetry Among Older Adults in Japan
Generativity may play a protective role in buffering older adults from the adverse effects of social isolation on loneliness. Promoting generativity among older adults may be a potential intervention strategy to reduce loneliness and improve well-being in aging populations in Japan
Associations Between Loneliness and Cognitive Resilience to Neuropathology in Older Adults
Higher and increasing loneliness was associated with lower CR in the face of neuropathology. These results suggest that some individuals are less resilient to the accumulation of neuropathology than others, and experiencing high/increasing loneliness is a key factor putting some at risk. Interventions aimed at optimizing cognitive function across older adults should include loneliness reduction as a potential area of focus
Personality traits and health care use: A coordinated analysis of 15 international samples
358,803). According to the synthesized results, people higher in conscientiousness, agreeableness, extraversion, and openness, and lower in neuroticism were more likely to visit the dentist; people higher in neuroticism were more likely to visit general medical practitioners; and people lower in conscientiousness and agreeableness and higher in neuroticism were more likely to be hospitalized. Associations tended to be small with odds ratios aroun…
Valuing Versus Having: The Contrary Roles of Valuing and Having Money and Prestige on Well-Being
Using data from Midlife in the United States ( N = 3,767), this study investigates how believing having money or occupational prestige is important for a good life is associated with different aspects of well-being. Actual income was positively associated with sense of purpose, personal growth, self-acceptance, environmental mastery, and life satisfaction; negatively associated with negative affect; and was not associated with autonomy, positive …
Rural–urban differences in personality traits and well‐being in adulthood
OBJECTIVE: One large focus of personality psychology is to understand the biopsychosocial factors responsible for adult personality development and well-being change. However, little is known about how macro-level contextual factors, such as rurality-urbanicity, are related to personality development and well-being change. METHOD: The present study uses data from two large longitudinal studies of U.S. Americans (MIDUS, HRS) to examine whether the…
A Longitudinal Investigation of the Association Between Stroke and Loneliness
This research adds to a growing body of evidence demonstrating elevated loneliness among stroke survivors and highlights the need for interventions to increase social connectedness after stroke
Values and stress: Examining the relations between values and general and domain-specific stress in two longitudinal studies
Stress experiences have been found to vary at both the interindividual and intraindividual levels. The present study investigated the concurrent and longitudinal associations between values and stress at both the between-person and the within-person levels. We considered multiple aspects of stress, including self-reported stressor exposure and perceived stress, as well as general and domain-specific stress. In Study 1, data were drawn from the Mi…
Longitudinal associations among the Big Five personality traits and healthcare utilization in the U.S
Where Does Purpose Belong in Well-Being Theory?
Is purpose a cause, consequence, correlate, or component of well-being? Sense of purpose can be understood as the extent to which one feels that they have personally meaningful goals and directions guiding them through life. Because models of well-being differ in how they conceptualize what it means to be psychologically well, purpose is treated differently across these frameworks. In this chapter, we begin by considering how purpose fits in vari…
Psychology (30 works) · Social Psychology (19 works) · Developmental psychology (18 works) · Psychological Well-being and Life Satisfaction (15 works) · Personality (12 works) · Social Psychology (12 works) · Big Five personality traits (11 works) · Clinical Psychology (11 works) · Cognitive psychology (10 works) · Health disparities and outcomes (9 works)