Emotional Reactivity to Daily Positive and Negative Events in Adulthood: The Role of Adverse Childhood Experiences

<p dir="ltr">Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) have lasting impact on everyday emotional <p dir="ltr">experiences in adulthood, with extant evidence linking ACEs to elevated emotional reactivity. <p dir="ltr">However, findings are typically based on reactivity to negative daily events (i.e., stressors) <p dir="ltr">and its moderation by cumulative ACEs (where individual adversities are summed into a total <p dir="ltr">score), which overlooks adversity-specific associations and reactivity to other types of daily <p dir="ltr">events. We therefore examine cumulative and individual ACEs as moderators of emotional <p dir="ltr">reactivity to positive and negative daily events. Data was drawn from the National Study of <p dir="ltr">Daily Experiences 2 (NSDE-II), collected 2004-2009, whereupon middle-aged and older <p dir="ltr">adults (N= 1,994; Mage= 58.61; range: 35–86; 57% female) reported daily events and affect on <p dir="ltr">eight consecutive evenings. Multi-level models were used to estimate the moderating role of <p dir="ltr">ACEs for within-person associations between positive/negative events and affect. We found <p dir="ltr">that cumulative ACEs and a number of individual adversities (specifically those characterized <p dir="ltr">by abuse but not by neglect or household challenge/dysfunction) were associated with <p dir="ltr">emotional reactivity to positive and negative daily events. That is, cumulative and abuse- <p dir="ltr">based ACEs were associated with increased negative affect and/or decreased positive affect <p dir="ltr">on days with a negative event and on days with a positive event. Our findings add to literature <p dir="ltr">on the long-lasting and pervasive influence of early life experiences on everyday emotional <p dir="ltr">experiences in adulthood. We discuss differences in reactivity to positive vs negative daily <p dir="ltr">events and in cumulative vs adversity-specific associations as well as their theoretical and <p dir="ltr">methodological implications.