Conflict Management Mediates the Relationship Between Depressive Symptoms and Daily Negative Events: Interpersonal Competence and Daily Stress Generation

Abstract

We combined informant reports and daily diary surveys to examine the associations between depression, interpersonal competence, and daily stress generation. College students completed measures of past and current depression, interpersonal competence, and a 7-day diary of daily negative events. Informants completed reports of participants' interpersonal competence. Current depressive symptoms predicted lower self-reported interpersonal competence in several domains, as well as more daily dependent and independent negative events. Self-reported Conflict Management and Emotional Support predicted dependent and independent daily events. Self-reported Initiation predicted dependent events only. Multilevel mediation models showed that Conflict Management mediated the relation between depression and daily stress generation. Our results support a model of stress generation at the daily level and suggest that interpersonal competence is an important mediator of this process.