Susan T Charles
Biographic Data
| ID | 174975 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Susan T Charles |
| GIVEN NAMES | Susan T |
| FAMILY NAME | Charles |
| SIGNATURE | CHARLES S T |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Irvine |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6638-5335 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 61 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1189 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 61 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1980 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 13 |
Age Moderates Within-Person Associations Between Momentary Affect and Cognitive Performance in Daily Life
The advantages of seeing the silver lining: How valuing emotions moderates the link between ambivalent ties and daily health
Objectives Relationships that elicit both positive and negative emotions, known as ambivalent ties, are often linked to adverse health outcomes in later life. Their negative health impacts, however, may depend on how older adults appraise different emotional experiences (e.g., viewing relationship “ups and downs” as useful or meaningful). This study examined whether bivalent affect valuation (BAV; the extent to which people appraise both positive…
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…
Too little, too much, and “just right”: Exploring the “goldilocks zone” of daily stress reactivity
Hormetic models of stress resilience describe nonlinear relations for exposure to adversity and health outcomes, where exposure induces salutary changes up to a threshold, with changes becoming deleterious afterward. Here we apply a hormetic model of stress to reactivity to daily stressors, examining whether mental and physical health benefits arise from low-to-moderate reactivity but then decrease at higher levels. Data are from the second wave …
A Greater Variety of Social Activities Is Associated With Lower Mortality Risk
Findings suggest that a greater variety of social activities is linked to mortality risk even after adjusting for social activity frequency, nonsocial activities, and health status across adulthood
Preserving What Matters: Longitudinal Changes in Control Over Interpersonal Stress and Noninterpersonal Stress in Daily Life
Results are consistent with socioemotional selectivity and underscore the importance of interpersonal relationships in later adulthood. Understanding how people select and preserve certain aspects of control in their daily life can help guide efforts toward maximizing gains and minimizing losses in domains that matter most to people as they grow older
Perceived control across the adult lifespan: Longitudinal changes in global control and daily stressor control
Perceived control is an important psychosocial resource for health and well-being across the lifespan. Global control (i.e., overall perceived control) decreases over time in studies following people every few years to upwards of 10 years. Changes across wider intervals of the lifespan, however, have yet to be examined. Further, how perceived control changes for specific aspects of daily life, such as stressors, remains comparatively less clear. …
Longitudinal change in daily stress across 20 years of adulthood: Results from the national study of daily experiences
This study examined age-related patterns in exposure and affective reactivity to daily stressors across a 20-year time span among adults who were between 22 and 77 years old at their baseline interview. Longitudinal data from the National Study of Daily Experiences (NSDE) consisted of three bursts of eight consecutive nightly interviews of stress and affect. Analyses made use of all available data from a U.S. National sample of respondents who pa…
Growing old and being old: Emotional well-being across adulthood
The present study examines change in reports of daily, weekly, and monthly psychological distress over 20 years, and of negative and positive affect over 10 years, using data from the Midlife in the United States study. The study includes three waves of data collection on adults ranging from 22 to 95 years old. Cross-sectional findings reveal that older age is related to lower levels of psychological distress and negative affect and to higher lev…
Adding Insult to Injury: Everyday Discrimination Moderates Stressor-Related Negative Affect
Studies examining the effects of discrimination on emotional well-being have often overlooked (a) differential effects of both everyday and lifetime discrimination and (b) how both types of discrimination may exacerbate stressor-related affect-even when daily stressors are unrelated to discrimination. The current study examined the effects of daily stressors not attributed to discrimination (i.e., nondiscrimination-related daily stressors) on dai…
Who Has Active Lifestyles? Sociodemographic and Personality Correlates of Activity Diversity in Two Samples of Adults
Findings were discussed in terms of age-specific associations between sociodemographic and personality characteristics and activity diversity
Narcissism, Social Experiences, and Mood in Late Life
The findings present a nuanced understanding of how the self-centeredness of narcissism may be manifest in late life. More narcissistic people may be less sensitive to close partner's (e.g., family, friends) distress, but their mood may be more susceptible to negative social events, especially with weak ties (e.g., acquaintances)
Physical Activity and Daily Stress Processes in Older Adulthood
Physical activity may bolster older adults' capabilities to manage affective responses to interpersonal stressors in a more successful way. These findings underscore the importance of assessing physical activity and stressful events in daily life and have implications for both physical and psychological well-being
Not Just How Much, But How Many: Overall and Domain-Specific Activity Variety and Cognitive Functioning in Adulthood
Objectives Active lifestyles are related to higher levels of cognitive functioning. Fewer studies have examined the importance of engaging in different activities (activity variety) for cognitive functioning. Moreover, it is unclear whether activity variety in specific domains (i.e., cognitive, physical, or social) is important for cognitive health. The current study examined whether overall activity variety as well as variety in specific domains…
The mixed benefits of a stressor-free life
Research documents the pernicious effects of daily stressors on well-being, but often ignored in these studies are people reporting no stressors. The current study compared adults who reported no daily stressors with adults who reported at least one stressor across 8 consecutive days on measures of well-being. Of the 2,804 respondents (age range = 25-75 years, M = 53.46) from the Midlife in the United State Survey daily diary study, 10% reported …
Motivation and Healthy Aging: A Heuristic Model
Building on the seminal definition of “healthy aging” by the World Health Organization (WHO, 2015; 2020), we present a model of motivation and healthy aging that is aimed at identifying the central psychological constructs and processes for understanding what older persons value, and how they can attain and maintain these valued aspects of their lives. This model places goals at its center, and then proceeds from motivational processes of goal se…
Leveraging Daily Social Experiences to Motivate Healthy Aging
Models of healthy aging highlight the motivating influence of social connections. Social experiences constantly shape our thoughts and behaviors throughout daily life, and these daily processes slowly and consistently influence our health and well-being. In this article, we discuss research that has moved from cross-sectional laboratory designs emphasizing individual behaviors to more naturalistic within-person paradigms linking daily social expe…
Functional Limitations, Social Integration, and Daily Activities in Late Life
This study provided a modest indication that functional limitations in community-dwelling older adults are associated with patterns of activity that may lead to further limitations, disability, or loss of autonomy. Findings warrant longitudinal follow-up to establish subsequent patterns of decline or stability
Rich and Balanced Experiences of Daily Emotions Are Associated With Activity Diversity Across Adulthood
Broad and even participation of daily activities may provide more opportunities to experience rich and balanced emotions. Findings suggest that the association between activity diversity and emodiversity exists across adulthood, underscoring the value of including information about daily activities when examining emotional experiences across the life span
Cultural differences in coping with interpersonal tensions lead to divergent shorter- and longer-term affective consequences
Culture influences how people cope with interpersonal tensions, with those from more collectivistic contexts (e.g. Chinese Americans (CA)) generally opting for strategies promoting social harmony whereas those from more individualistic contexts (e.g. European Americans (EA)) preferring confrontational strategies. The current study examined cultural differences in coping strategy choices and their linkages to immediate affective reactions and subs…
Positive Encounters as a Buffer: Pain and Sleep Disturbances in Older Adults’ Everyday Lives
Objectives: To test whether older adults' pain was bidirectionally associated with nighttime sleep disturbances and whether daily positive encounters attenuated these associations. Methods: Participants ( N = 292, mean = 73.71 years old) from the Daily Experiences and Well-being Study indicated pain and positive encounters with close partners (e.g., family and friends) and nonclose partners (e.g., acquaintances and service providers) every 3 hour…
Living Alone During Covid-19: Social Contact and Emotional Well-being Among Older Adults
Findings suggest older adults who live alone may be more reactive to social contact during the COVID-19 outbreak than older adults who reside with others. In-person contact may confer distinct benefits not available via telephone contact, suggesting that possible interventions during the pandemic may work best with safe forms of in-person contact, possibly with nonfamily members
Change Is Good for the Brain: Activity Diversity and Cognitive Functioning Across Adulthood
Activity diversity is important for cognitive health in adulthood. Future work can study the directionality between activity diversity and cognitive functioning and underlying social and neurological mechanisms for these associations
Friendships in Old Age: Daily Encounters and Emotional Well-Being
Findings are discussed in terms of functionalist theory, socioemotional selectivity theory, relationship ambivalence, and the benefits of less close ties. This work facilitates the understanding of how daily contact with friends can promote older adults' emotional well-being
Work-family spillover stress predicts health outcomes across two decades
Taking time seriously: A theory of socioemotional selectivity
Strength and vulnerability integration: A model of emotional well-being across adulthood
The following article presents the theoretical model of strength and vulnerability integration (SAVI) to explain factors that influence emotion regulation and emotional well-being across adulthood. The model posits that trajectories of adult development are marked by age-related enhancement in the use of strategies that serve to avoid or limit exposure to negative stimuli but by age-related vulnerabilities in situations that elicit high levels of…
Better with age: Social relationships across adulthood
Older adults typically report higher levels of satisfaction with their social relationships than younger adults. The present paper integrates current developmental research to explain why social relationships are generally more positive with age. We discuss actions by older adults that contribute to more positive social experiences. We also include social role changes that may provide advantages for older adults when navigating their relationship…
Age-related differences and change in positive and negative affect over 23 years
Positive and negative affect, measured by the Bradburn Affect Balance Scale, were studied in a longitudinal sample spanning from 1971 to 1994. The sample (N = 2,804) represented 4 generations of families. Linear trend analyses compared generations over time for positive and negative affect and also examined the possible influences of neuroticism and extraversion on initial levels of affect and patterns of change in affect. Negative affect decreas…
Close social ties and health in later life: Strengths and vulnerabilities
The world is aging at an unprecedented rate, with older adults representing the fastest-growing segment of the population in most economically developed and developing countries. This demographic shift leaves much uncharted territory for researchers who study social relationships and health. Social relationships exert powerful influences on physical health in later adulthood, a critical consideration given age-related increases in the prevalence …
Neighborhood cohesion and daily well-being: Results from a diary study
Neighborhood cohesion, neighborhood disorder, and cardiometabolic risk
Living Alone During Covid-19: Social Contact and Emotional Well-being Among Older Adults
Findings suggest older adults who live alone may be more reactive to social contact during the COVID-19 outbreak than older adults who reside with others. In-person contact may confer distinct benefits not available via telephone contact, suggesting that possible interventions during the pandemic may work best with safe forms of in-person contact, possibly with nonfamily members
Neighborhood features and physiological risk: An examination of allostatic load
Personality and stressor-related affect
Greater increases in negative affect and greater decreases in positive affect on days stressors occur portend poorer mental and physical health years later. Although personality traits influence stressor-related affect, only neuroticism and extraversion among the Big Five personality traits have been examined in any detail. Moreover, personality traits may shape how people appraise daily stressors, yet few studies have examined how stressor-relat…
Variety Is the Spice of Late Life: Social Integration and Daily Activity
Findings are discussed in terms of social engagement theory, network diversity, and the benefits of weak ties
Age differences in affective and cardiovascular responses to a negative social interaction: The role of goals, appraisals, and emotion regulation
Older adults often report less affective reactivity to interpersonal tensions than younger individuals, but few studies have directly investigated mechanisms explaining this effect. The current study examined whether older adults' differential endorsement of goals, appraisals, and emotion regulation strategies (i.e., conflict avoidance/de-escalation, self-distraction) during a controlled negative social interaction may explain age differences in …
Perceptions of childhood relationships with mother and father: Daily emotional and stressor experiences in adulthood
Adults who report having had high-quality relationships with their parents during childhood have better overall mental health and are at decreased risk for mental disorders compared with those who report low parental relationship quality. Researchers have predominantly focused on the relationship with the mother, often times excluding the unique role that fathers may play in the long-term development of their offspring. The current study examined…
Age Differences in Emotional Well-Being Vary by Temporal Recall
Taking into account how emotion reports differ based on method provides a more realistic picture of emotional experience in adulthood. Findings suggest that age differences in emotional experiences vary based on whether questions ask about short versus longer time periods. Age advantages are most pronounced when people recall emotions across increasingly longer periods of time
Age Differences in Reactivity to Daily Stressors: The Role of Personal Control
We examined age and control belief differences in physical and emotional reactivity to daily stressors in four domains: interpersonal, work, network, and home. We combined data from the National Study of Daily Experiences and the Midlife in the United States survey, resulting in 1,031 participants who reported on 7,229 days. Findings from multilevel models suggest that age and control beliefs play an important role in a person's reactivity to int…
Living With Chronic Health Conditions: Age Differences in Affective Well-Being
The current study examined age differences in affective well-being and reactivity to daily stressors among people varying in health status. Participants (N = 3,493), aged 25 to 74 years, reported global affective well-being in the Midlife Development in the United States survey, and a subset (n = 983) reported their affective reactivity to stressors across eight consecutive evenings in the National Study of Daily Experiences. Across groups of peo…
Longitudinal change in daily stress across 20 years of adulthood: Results from the national study of daily experiences
This study examined age-related patterns in exposure and affective reactivity to daily stressors across a 20-year time span among adults who were between 22 and 77 years old at their baseline interview. Longitudinal data from the National Study of Daily Experiences (NSDE) consisted of three bursts of eight consecutive nightly interviews of stress and affect. Analyses made use of all available data from a U.S. National sample of respondents who pa…
Friendships in Old Age: Daily Encounters and Emotional Well-Being
Findings are discussed in terms of functionalist theory, socioemotional selectivity theory, relationship ambivalence, and the benefits of less close ties. This work facilitates the understanding of how daily contact with friends can promote older adults' emotional well-being
Change Is Good for the Brain: Activity Diversity and Cognitive Functioning Across Adulthood
Activity diversity is important for cognitive health in adulthood. Future work can study the directionality between activity diversity and cognitive functioning and underlying social and neurological mechanisms for these associations
Fewer Ups and Downs: Daily Stressors Mediate Age Differences in Negative Affect
The current study examined age differences in daily stressors, positive events (uplifts), and their associations with emotional experience among healthy older women. Women (N = 101, 63-93 years old) reported their daily experiences across 1 week. Older age was related to fewer stressors and less frequent negative affect. However, the association between negative affect and age was no longer significant after accounting for the occurrence of daily…
Not Just How Much, But How Many: Overall and Domain-Specific Activity Variety and Cognitive Functioning in Adulthood
Objectives Active lifestyles are related to higher levels of cognitive functioning. Fewer studies have examined the importance of engaging in different activities (activity variety) for cognitive functioning. Moreover, it is unclear whether activity variety in specific domains (i.e., cognitive, physical, or social) is important for cognitive health. The current study examined whether overall activity variety as well as variety in specific domains…
Leveraging Daily Social Experiences to Motivate Healthy Aging
Models of healthy aging highlight the motivating influence of social connections. Social experiences constantly shape our thoughts and behaviors throughout daily life, and these daily processes slowly and consistently influence our health and well-being. In this article, we discuss research that has moved from cross-sectional laboratory designs emphasizing individual behaviors to more naturalistic within-person paradigms linking daily social expe…
Work-family spillover stress predicts health outcomes across two decades
Activity Diversity and Its Associations With Psychological Well-Being Across Adulthood
Our findings suggest that activity diversity may play an important role in older adults' concurrent well-being and also in their long-term longitudinal improvements of well-being
The association of daily physical symptoms with future health
Traditional roles of American women seen changing in 1980 Virginia Slims Poll
The Opportunity Cost of the Sale of Local Authority Rented Accommodation: A Comment
Taking time seriously: A theory of socioemotional selectivity
Applying science to human behavior
Age-related differences and change in positive and negative affect over 23 years
Positive and negative affect, measured by the Bradburn Affect Balance Scale, were studied in a longitudinal sample spanning from 1971 to 1994. The sample (N = 2,804) represented 4 generations of families. Linear trend analyses compared generations over time for positive and negative affect and also examined the possible influences of neuroticism and extraversion on initial levels of affect and patterns of change in affect. Negative affect decreas…
Aging and emotional memory: The forgettable nature of negative images for older adults.
Two studies examined age differences in recall and recognition memory for positive, negative, and neutral stimuli. In Study 1, younger, middle-aged, and older adults were shown images on a computer screen and, after a distraction task, were asked first to recall as many as they could and then to identify previously shown images from a set of old and new ones. The relative number of negative images compared with positive and neutral images recalle…
Socioemotional Selectivity Theory and the Regulation of Emotion in the Second Half of Life
Benefit payments, informal care and female labour supply
This article examines the impact of informal care responsibilities on female earnings and labour supply. It extends previous work on the labour market costs of informal care by examining who, among the full set of carers has access to the two most relevant existing social security benefits (Attendance Allowance and Invalid Care Allowance) and to what effect. Results from previous work using an earlier data set are compared with those obtained her…
The opportunity costs of informal care: Does gender matter
Age Differences in Reactivity to Daily Stressors: The Role of Personal Control
We examined age and control belief differences in physical and emotional reactivity to daily stressors in four domains: interpersonal, work, network, and home. We combined data from the National Study of Daily Experiences and the Midlife in the United States survey, resulting in 1,031 participants who reported on 7,229 days. Findings from multilevel models suggest that age and control beliefs play an important role in a person's reactivity to int…
Living With Chronic Health Conditions: Age Differences in Affective Well-Being
The current study examined age differences in affective well-being and reactivity to daily stressors among people varying in health status. Participants (N = 3,493), aged 25 to 74 years, reported global affective well-being in the Midlife Development in the United States survey, and a subset (n = 983) reported their affective reactivity to stressors across eight consecutive evenings in the National Study of Daily Experiences. Across groups of peo…
Perceptions of Social Transgressions in Adulthood
People may react differently when individuals of different ages commit a social faux pas. Younger (22 to 35 years old) and older (65 to 77 years old) participants read vignettes where age of characters committing social transgressions varied (young vs. old). Participants rated whether the offended person would respond with engagement, confrontational, and avoidant behaviors and how much people would blame or forgive the transgressor. Multilevel m…
Social and Emotional Aging
The past several decades have witnessed unidimensional decline models of aging give way to life-span developmental models that consider how specific processes and strategies facilitate adaptive aging. In part, this shift was provoked by the stark contrast between findings that clearly demonstrate decreased biological, physiological, and cognitive capacity and those suggesting that people are generally satisfied in old age and experience relativel…
Who will care? Employment participation and willingness to supply informal care
Goal Striving and Maladaptive Coping in Adults Living With Spinal Cord Injury: Associations With Affective Well-Being
Objectives. The current study examined how goal engagement and two coping strategies (self-blame and denial) hypothesized to prevent successful disengagement relate to affective well-being among adults with a functional disability. Method: Ninety-nine community-dwelling adults (23 to 76 years old, 66 men) with spinal cord injury participated in structured interviews assessing affective well-being using the Positive and Negative Affect Scale (Wats…
Fewer Ups and Downs: Daily Stressors Mediate Age Differences in Negative Affect
The current study examined age differences in daily stressors, positive events (uplifts), and their associations with emotional experience among healthy older women. Women (N = 101, 63-93 years old) reported their daily experiences across 1 week. Older age was related to fewer stressors and less frequent negative affect. However, the association between negative affect and age was no longer significant after accounting for the occurrence of daily…
Perceptions of childhood relationships with mother and father: Daily emotional and stressor experiences in adulthood
Adults who report having had high-quality relationships with their parents during childhood have better overall mental health and are at decreased risk for mental disorders compared with those who report low parental relationship quality. Researchers have predominantly focused on the relationship with the mother, often times excluding the unique role that fathers may play in the long-term development of their offspring. The current study examined…
Strength and vulnerability integration: A model of emotional well-being across adulthood
The following article presents the theoretical model of strength and vulnerability integration (SAVI) to explain factors that influence emotion regulation and emotional well-being across adulthood. The model posits that trajectories of adult development are marked by age-related enhancement in the use of strategies that serve to avoid or limit exposure to negative stimuli but by age-related vulnerabilities in situations that elicit high levels of…
Better with age: Social relationships across adulthood
Older adults typically report higher levels of satisfaction with their social relationships than younger adults. The present paper integrates current developmental research to explain why social relationships are generally more positive with age. We discuss actions by older adults that contribute to more positive social experiences. We also include social role changes that may provide advantages for older adults when navigating their relationship…
Affective Reactivity to Daily Stressors and Long-Term Risk of Reporting a Chronic Physical Health Condition
BACKGROUND: Daily stressors, such as an argument with a spouse or an impending deadline, are associated with short-term changes in physical health symptoms. Whether these minor hassles have long-term physical health ramifications, however, is largely unknown. PURPOSE: The current study examined whether exposure and reactivity to daily stressors is associated with long-term risk of reporting a chronic physical health condition. METHODS: Participan…
The Wear and Tear of Daily Stressors on Mental Health
Researchers assert that affective responses to seemingly minor daily events have long-term implications for mental health, yet this phenomenon has rarely been investigated. In the current study, we examined how levels of daily negative affect and affective reactivity in response to daily stressors predicted general affective distress and self-reported anxiety and depressive disorders 10 years after they were first assessed. Across eight consecuti…
Neighborhood cohesion and daily well-being: Results from a diary study
Age, Rumination, and Emotional Recovery From a Psychosocial Stressor
Rumination delays BP recovery among older adults, suggesting age-specific risks associated with different types of emotion regulation strategies
Age differences in affective and cardiovascular responses to a negative social interaction: The role of goals, appraisals, and emotion regulation
Older adults often report less affective reactivity to interpersonal tensions than younger individuals, but few studies have directly investigated mechanisms explaining this effect. The current study examined whether older adults' differential endorsement of goals, appraisals, and emotion regulation strategies (i.e., conflict avoidance/de-escalation, self-distraction) during a controlled negative social interaction may explain age differences in …
Friend support and psychological distress in a U.S. adult twin sample
Friend support is often assumed to exert direct environmental influences on psychological distress, yet the role of both genetic and environmental influences on this association has not been examined. This study investigates whether both genetic and environmental factors explain the link between friend support and psychological distress in adults. The sample was drawn from the Midlife Development in the United States study and included 947 pairs …
Psychology (56 works) · Developmental psychology (38 works) · Health disparities and outcomes (34 works) · Aging and Gerontology Research (29 works) · Medicine (29 works) · Psychological Well-being and Life Satisfaction (27 works) · Clinical Psychology (20 works) · Clinical Psychology (20 works) · Gerontology (20 works) · Social Psychology (18 works)