Reduce negative life events to Increase satisfaction: A daily diary study on the relationship between negative life events and life satisfaction

Youling Bai, Can Ben, Wenshuang Xu, Yu Wu and Yanling Liu

Social Science & Medicine, 2024, vol. 357, issue C

Abstract: Life satisfaction refers to an individual’ s cognitive evaluation of the overall quality of their life considering the various aspects therein. Although the existing research has demonstrated the between-person relationship between negative life events and life satisfaction based on retrospective measures, less is known about this relationship at the within-person level. A daily diary method could examine this within-person relationship and decrease systematic recall biases. Therefore, this study investigated the link between daily negative life events and daily life satisfaction, as well as the mediating role of perceived stress and the moderating role of trait rumination in 146 young adults (Mage = 20.75, SD = 1.35) using a 14-day daily diary design. Multilevel regression analysis showed that daily negative life events had negative predictive effects on daily life satisfaction. In addition, the multilevel 1-1-1 mediation analysis indicated that daily perceived stress mediated the association between daily negative life events and daily life satisfaction. More importantly, the mediating effect of perceived stress was moderated by trait rumination, with the within-person mediating effect being stronger for individuals with higher than those with lower trait rumination tendencies. These findings contribute to the understanding of the underlying pathways in the relationship between daily negative life events and daily life satisfaction and provide a new perspective for improving individuals’ life satisfaction.

Keywords: Negative life events; Perceived stress; Trait rumination; Life satisfaction; Daily diary (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953624006440
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:357:y:2024:i:c:s0277953624006440

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2024.117191

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian

More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().