Amanda L. Hyde

A Daily Analysis of Physical Activity and Satisfaction With Life in Emerging Adults

OBJECTIVE Subjective well-being has well-established positive health consequences. During emerging adulthood, from ages 18 to 25 years, peoples global evaluations of their well-being (i.e., satisfaction with life [SWL]) appear to worsen more than any other time in the adult life span, indicating that this population would benefit from strategies to enhance SWL. In these studies, we investigated top-down (i.e., time-invariant, trait-like) and bottom-up (i.e., time-varying, state-like) influences of physical activity (PA) on daily SWL. METHODS Two daily diary studies lasting 8 days (N = 190) and 14 days (N = 63) were conducted with samples of emerging adults enrolled in college to evaluate relations between daily PA and SWL while controlling for established and plausible top-down and bottom-up influences on SWL. RESULTS In both studies, multilevel models indicated that people reported greater SWL on days when they were more active (a within-person, bottom-up effect). Top-down effects of PA were not significant in either study. These findings were robust when we controlled for competing top-down influences (e.g., sex, personality traits, self-esteem, body mass index, mental health symptoms, fatigue) and bottom-up influences (e.g., daily self-esteem, daily mental health symptoms, daily fatigue). CONCLUSIONS We concluded that SWL was impacted by peoples daily PA rather than their trait level of PA over time. These findings extend evidence that PA is a health behavior with important consequences for daily well-being and should be considered when developing national policies to enhance SWL.

Sedentary behavior as a daily process regulated by habits and intentions

OBJECTIVE Sedentary behavior is a health risk but little is known about the motivational processes that regulate daily sedentary behavior. This study was designed to test a dual-process model of daily sedentary behavior, with an emphasis on the role of intentions and habits in regulating daily sedentary behavior. METHOD College students (N = 128) self-reported on their habit strength for sitting and completed a 14-day ecological momentary assessment study that combined daily diaries for reporting motivation and behavior with ambulatory monitoring of sedentary behavior using accelerometers. RESULTS Less than half of the variance in daily sedentary behavior was attributable to between-person differences. People with stronger sedentary habits reported more sedentary behavior on average. People whose intentions for limiting sedentary behavior were stronger, on average, exhibited less self-reported sedentary behavior (and marginally less monitored sedentary behavior). Daily deviations in those intentions were negatively associated with changes in daily sedentary behavior (i.e., stronger than usual intentions to limit sedentary behavior were associated with reduced sedentary behavior). Sedentary behavior also varied within people as a function of concurrent physical activity, the day of week, and the day in the sequence of the monitoring period. CONCLUSIONS Sedentary behavior was regulated by both automatic and controlled motivational processes. Interventions should target both of these motivational processes to facilitate and maintain behavior change. Links between sedentary behavior and daily deviations in intentions also indicate the need for ongoing efforts to support controlled motivational processes on a daily basis.

Pathological narcissism and interpersonal behavior in daily life.

The cognitive-affective processing system (CAPS) has been proposed as a useful metaframework for integrating contextual differences in situations with individual differences in personality pathology. In this article, we evaluated the potential of combining the CAPS metaframework and contemporary interpersonal theory to investigate how individual differences in pathological narcissism influenced interpersonal functioning in daily life. University students (N = 184) completed event-contingent reports about interpersonal interactions across a 7-day diary study. Using multilevel regression models, we found that combinations of narcissistic expression (grandiosity, vulnerability) were associated with different interpersonal behavior patterns reflective of interpersonal dysfunction. These results are among the first to empirically demonstrate the usefulness of the CAPS model to conceptualize personality pathology through the patterning of if-then interpersonal processes.