Examining the impact of major life events on the frequency and experience of daily social events.

Abstract

Life events can impact people's dispositional functioning by changing their state-level patterns of thoughts, feelings, and behavior. One pathway through which this change may be facilitated is changes in the experience of daily social events. We examined the dynamic relationship between major life events and the subsequent experience of positive and negative daily social events in a year-long longitudinal study (initial N=1247). Experiencing positive and negative major life events moderated the effects of positive and negative social events on event-contingent state well-being and ill-being in ways that were mostly (but not always) consistent with both endowment and contrast effects on judgments of well-being. Furthermore, negative life events predicted an increase in the subsequent trajectory of negative social events, while the experience of daily ill-being predicted the subsequent experience of negative social events. These findings highlight the possible impact of major life events by explaining how they shape the subsequent experience of daily social events.