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Living With Chronic Health Conditions: Age Differences in Affective Well-Being

¹ Department of Psychology and Social Behavior, University of California, Irvine.
² Department of Human Development and Family Studies, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park.

Address correspondence to Jennifer Piazza, Department of Psychology and Social Behavior, 3340 Social Ecology II, University of California, Irvine, CA 92697-7085. E-mail: jpiazza{at}uci.edu

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 people varying in number of chronic conditions, older adults reported higher levels of global affective well-being and lower levels of affective reactivity than did younger adults, with one exception. Among people reporting four or more chronic conditions, older adults were just as reactive to daily stressors as were younger adults.