EMOTIONAL REACTIVITY TO EVERYDAY PROBLEMS, AFFECTIVE INERTIA, AND NEUROTICISM

A naturalistic diary recording study was conducted to assess affective responses to everyday stress. Community-residing male participants ma de diary recordings regarding problem occurrence and mood several time s a day for 8 days. In addition to reporting more frequent daily probl ems, persons scoring high in neuroticism were more reactive to stresso rs and were more distressed by recurrent Problems than were persons sc oring low in neuroticism. New problems affected everyone comparably. T here was also evidence of affective inertia, such that bad mood was mo re likely to carry over to the next assessment. This lag effect tended to be stronger among more neurotic individuals.