Everyday social interactions and intra-individual variability in affect: A systematic review and meta-analysis of ecological momentary assessment studies

Abstract

Intra-individual variability in affect has been associated with aspects of individuals’ lives, such as everyday social interactions. Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) has been tailored to assess the dynamics of everyday events and feelings and in recent decades there has been a burgeoning of EMA research on the intra-individual links between social interactions and momentary affect in daily life. This systematic review and meta-analysis was conducted to identify within-person relationships between social interactions with positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA). Both quantitative and qualitative features of social interaction (i.e., uniqueness of the partner, interpersonal perceptions of an interaction) predict within-person variance in PA and NA. The results of meta-analysis indicated small-sized associations between quantitative features of social interactions with PA and NA, and moderate-sized associations between qualitative features of social interactions with PA and NA, which were only somewhat moderated by methodological factors. We conclude that EMA is a promising method of investigating intra-individual variability in affect unfolding in everyday social environments and offer suggestions for substantiating the within-person perspective to both researchers and clinicians.