Anthony D. Ong

Cornell University | CU · Department of Human Development

Objective: To examine the extent to which self-reported experiences of discrimination are associated with pain interference among men and women with chronic non-cancer pain. Methods: Data are from the Study of Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) Refresher Cohort. The analytic sample consisted of 207 adults with chronic pain (54.2 ± 12.8 years;...

Objective: The present study tested preregistered predictions regarding the prospective associations between level and change in subjective well-being (SWB) and physical health. Methods: In two large longitudinal panel studies conducted in the U.S. (N = 3,294) and Japan (N = 657), we used multi-level growth curve models to estimate level and cha...

It is well established that negative financial events during macroeconomic crises have a significant impact on individuals’ mental health. Much less is known about how and for whom economic crises impact mental health. Using data from the Midlife in the United States study, we examine the mental health impact of the Great Recession in the U.S. Draw...

Objectives: Studies of discrimination and sleep have largely focused on between-person differences in discrimination as a correlate of sleep outcomes. A common criticism of this research is that standard questionnaire measures of discrimination may be confounded by personality and identity and are subject to recall bias. Partially addressing these...

This study assessed age-graded change in positive and negative affect over decades of the lifespan. We conducted a coordinated integrative data analysis (IDA) using data from 11 longitudinal samples, comprising a total of 74076 respondents, spanning the ages of 11 to 106. Positive and negative affect were measured using the CES-D in 8 studies, the...

Increasing evidence suggests that heightened affective reactivity to daily stressors has implications for mental and physical health, yet little is known about the long-term repercussions of day-to-day stress reactivity for marital quality. This study examined associations between affective reactivity and two indicators of marital well-being (marit...

Past research has shown a negative relationship between time spent watching television (TV) and several indicators of hedonic well-being—including positive affect (PA). However, cross-sectional designs employed in most of these studies do not allow for inferences regarding the direction of the link between TV watching and PA. Present research aimed...

This study examined whether individual differences in affective reactivity, defined as changes in positive or negative affect in response to daily racial discrimination, predicted subsequent depressive symptoms. Participants were African American graduate and postgraduate students ( N = 174; M age = 30 years) recruited for a measurement-burst study...

Objective: This study tested longitudinal associations between absolute levels of perceived partner responsiveness (PPR; how much people feel their romantic partners understand, care for, and appreciate them), daily negative affect (NA) reactivity and positive affect (PA) reactivity, and all-cause mortality in a sample of 1,208 adults over three w...

Quality of marital relationships is consistently linked to personal well-being. However, almost all of the studies linking marital processes to well-being have been conducted in Western (particularly North American) countries. Growing evidence shows that perceived partner responsiveness is a central relationship process predicting well-being in Wes...

The degree of relationship between positive and negative emotional states or emotional complexity is a topic of ongoing debate. At issue is whether positive and negative emotions are opposite ends of a bipolar continuum or independent dimensions in a bivariate distribution. In this review, we summarize work suggesting that the distinction between p...

There is growing evidence that inflammatory responses may help to explain how emotions get “under the skin” to influence disease susceptibility. Moving beyond examination of individuals’ average level of emotion, this study examined how the breadth and relative abundance of emotions that individuals experience—emodiversity—is related to systemic in...

Growing evidence from field studies has linked daily stressors to dysregulated patterns of diurnal cortisol. Less is known about whether naturally-occurring positive events in everyday life are associated with diurnal cortisol. The objectives of this study were to evaluate daily positive events as predictors of between-person differences and within...

Objectives: Functionalist emotion and ecological systems theories suggest emodiversity-the variety and relative abundance of individuals' emotion experiences-is beneficial for psychological and physical health and may change with age. This paper examines and provides recommendations for operationalization of diversity-type intraindividual variabil...

Increasing evidence suggests that individual differences in the reporting of microaggressions or subtle forms of everyday discrimination increases risk for poor health, but data on within-person associations between microaggressions and behavioral health outcomes is limited. This study examines the association between daily racial microaggressions...

Objective: Increasing evidence suggests that chronic exposure to unfair treatment or day-to-day discrimination increases risk for poor health, but data on biological stress mechanisms are limited. This study examined chronic experiences of unfair treatment in relation to allostatic load (AL), a multisystem index of biological dysregulation. Metho...

Psychologists use the term microaggressions to describe subtle forms of bias and discrimination experienced by members of marginalized groups. Lilienfeld (2017, this issue) makes an important contribution to the literature by presenting a critical review of the meaning and measurement of microaggression experiences. In this commentary, we argue tha...

There is robust evidence linking interindividual differences in positive affect (PA) with adaptive psychological and physical health outcomes. However, recent research has suggested that intraindividual variability or fluctuations in PA states over time may also be an important predictor of individual health outcomes. Here, we report on research th...

Past research has suggested that the cognitive broadening produced by positive emotions may extend to social contexts. Building on this evidence, two experiments conducted one year post-election examined the extent to which increased social perspective taking occurs after exposure to Obama. Experiment 1 demonstrated that African Americans exposed t...

Changes in physiological functioning pervade the aging process. Gradual declines in fundamental aspects of the neuroendocrine, cardiovascular, and immune systems contribute to increased risks for morbidity and mortality. Importantly, alterations in physiological processes are not invariant with age, but are influenced by individual differences in v...

The present study investigated whether perceived partner responsiveness—the extent to which individuals feel cared for, understood, and validated by their partner—predicted subjective sleep problems and objective (actigraph-based) sleep efficiency through lower anxiety and depression symptoms. A life span sample of 698 married or cohabiting adults...

A sizeable literature has implicated sleep in the phenomenological experience of various mood disorders, vulnerability to psychopathology, and overall poor psychological functioning. By contrast, positive affective states (e.g., joy, happiness, vigor, positive mood) that may contribute to sleep have been understudied. This systematic review integra...

Past research on emotion regulation has provided evidence that cognitive reappraisal predicts reactivity to affective stimuli and challenge tests in laboratory settings. However, little is known about how trait reappraisal might contribute to affective reactivity to everyday positive and negative events. Using a large, life-span sample of adults (N...

The effects of aging and loneliness on cardiovascular stress responses were examined in 91 young (18 –30 years) and 91 older (65– 80 years) normotensive adults. Participants completed the revised UCLA Loneliness Scale and a modified version of the Trier Social Stress Test. Piece-wise linear growth-curve analysis was used to model group differences...

Chronic pain is one of the most common conditions encountered by health care professionals, particularly among patients 65 years and older, and is associated with substantial disability and costs.1,2 Management of chronic pain in older adults is complicated by age-related physiologic changes, competing comorbidities that limit treatment choices, an...

Healthy normotensive men and women (N 33) underwent a 60-day diary assessment of emotions and cardiovascular functioning. Individual differences in social connectedness and mood were measured in questionnaires, and positive emotions, negative emotions, systolic blood pressure (SBP), and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) were assessed daily for 60 cons...

A sizeable literature has linked sleep to the phenomenological experience of various mood disorders, vulnerability to psychopathology, and overall emotional functioning. In contrast, researchers have rarely studied affective factors that may influence sleep. This chapter focuses on positive affect (PA) and evaluates its role in overall sleep qualit...

Emerging adulthood researchers are often interested in the effects of developmental tasks. The majority of transitions that occur during the period of early/emerging adulthood are not randomized; therefore, their effects on developmental trajectories are subject to potential bias due to confounding. Traditionally, confounding has been addressed usi...

Motivated by attachment theory and recent conceptualizations of perceived partner responsiveness as a core feature of close relationships, the authors examined change in hedonic and eudaimonic well-being over a decade in a sample of more than 2,000 married adults across the United States. Longitudinal analyses revealed that perceived partner respon...

Objective: Psychological distress may contribute to chronic activation of acute-phase inflammation. The current study investigated how financial stressors influence psychosocial functioning and inflammation. This study examined a) the direct relations between financial stress and inflammation; b) whether the relationships between financial stress...

Increasing evidence suggests that perceived social isolation or loneliness is a major risk factor for physical and mental illness in later life. This review assesses the status of research on loneliness and health in older adults. Key concepts and definitions of loneliness are identified, and the prevalence, correlates, and health effects of loneli...

Objective: Living a purposeful life is associated with better mental and physical health, including longevity. Accumulating evidence shows that these associations might be explained by the association between life purpose and regulation of physiological systems involved in the stress response. The aim of this study was to investigate the prospecti...

Inflammation increases the risk of chronic diseases, but the links between emotional responses to daily events and inflammation are unknown. We examined individual differences in affective reactivity to daily stressors (i.e., changes in positive and negative affect in response to stressors) as predictors of inflammatory markers interleukin-6 (IL-6)...

Several decades of research have demonstrated that marital relationships have a powerful influence on physical health. However, surprisingly little is known about how marriage affects health-both in terms of psychological processes and biological ones. Over a 10-year period, we investigated the associations between perceived partner responsiveness-...

The February-March 2014 special issue of the American Psychologist featured articles summarizing select contributions from the field of psychology to the assessment and treatment of chronic pain. The articles examined a range of psychosocial and family factors that influence individual adjustment and contribute to disparities in pain care. The revi...

Casual sex has become a normative experience among young people, raising concerns regarding its well-being consequences. Prior findings on main effects of casual sex on well-being are mixed, suggesting possible moderating factors. Using longitudinal and weekly diary methodologies, this study examined the moderating influence of sociosexuality, a st...

Exploratory process factor analysis (EPFA) is a data-driven latent variable model for multivariate time series. This article presents analytic standard errors for EPFA. Unlike standard errors for exploratory factor analysis with independent data, the analytic standard errors for EPFA take into account the time dependency in time series data. In add...

The current study tests the hypothesis that the influence of perceived discrimination on ethnic identity commitment is moderated by national identity (a person's psychological affiliation to their country of residence). A positive direct effect of national identity on ethnic identity commitment was also predicted. Analyses are based on a sample of...

We examined potential nonlinear links between age and subjective well-being, and the interpersonal processes (i.e., support, conflict) responsible for such links. One hundred forty-four men and women between the ages of 30–70 completed measures of satisfaction with life, social support (interpersonal support evaluation list), and social negativity...

Perceiving changes in life satisfaction has been linked to diminished health and well-being. Purpose in life is theorized to promote well-being by providing a sense of personal consistency, which may buffer the negative consequences of perceived change. Using data from the Midlife in the United States study, a cluster analysis was performed to expl...

Although epidemiological studies and community surveys of Asian Americans have found that lifetime occurrences of racial discrimination are associated with increased risk for psychological morbidity, little is known about how exposure to racial discrimination is patterned in everyday life. Extrapolating from previous qualitative research (Sue, Bucc...

Background Poor sleep contributes to adult morbidity and mortality. Purpose The study examined the extent to which trait positive affect (PA) and PA reactivity, defined as the magnitude of change in daily PA in response to daily events, were linked to sleep outcomes. Methods Analyses are based on data from 100 respondents selected from the National...

Past experiments have demonstrated that the cognitive broadening produced by positive emotions may extend to social contexts. Building on this evidence, we hypothesized that positive emotions triggered by thinking about Barack Obama may broaden and expand people's sense of self to include others. Results from an expressive-writing study demonstrate...

Social-class discrimination is evident in many societies around the world, but little is known about its impact on the poor or its role as an explanatory variable in the link between socioeconomic status and health. The current study tested the extent to which perceived discrimination explains socioeconomic gradients in physical health. Participant...

Objective: The aim of this study was to investigate whether perceived partner responsiveness (PPR) moderates the association between received partner emotional support (RPES) and all-cause mortality in a national U.S. sample. Method: Data were from the National Survey of Midlife Development in the United States, a national probability survey of...

The effects of aging and loneliness on cardiovascular stress responses were examined in 91 young (18-30 years) and 91 older (65-80 years) normotensive adults. Participants completed the revised UCLA Loneliness Scale and a modified version of the Trier Social Stress Test. Piece-wise linear growth-curve analysis was used to model group differences in...

In this chapter, we illustrate how recent advances in longitudinal methodology can be applied to diverse issues of interest to positive psychologists. The aim of the chapter is to describe how contemporary theories of well-being may be empirically evaluated using a variety of research designs and analytic techniques that can fully capture the compl...

Work settings with high levels of stress are consistently associated with poor health outcomes. This study examines the longitudinal relationships between the number of hours of driving a bus in a city and blood pressure and musculoskeletal problems. A prospective longitudinal design coupled with multilevel random coefficient modeling was used to e...

Structural equation models are increasingly used as a modeling tool for multivariate time series data in the social and behavioral sciences. Standard error estimators of SEM models, originally developed for independent data, require modifications to accommodate the fact that time series data are inherently dependent. In this article, we extend a sa...

This special section of Applied Psychology: Health and Well-Being brings together four original articles at the intersection of the environment and well-being. As a field of inquiry, positive psychology cuts across disciplinary boundaries to encompass many fields, including psychology, sociology, economics , and public health. The articles in this...

The current study considered the influence of the 2008 presidential election on the racial identity of African American college students (M(age) = 19.3 years; 26.3% male). The design of the study consisted of 2 components: longitudinal and daily. The longitudinal component assessed 3 dimensions of racial identity (centrality, private regard, and pu...

A growing body of literature supports a link between positive emotions and health in older adults. In this article, we review evidence of the effects of positive emotions on downstream biological processes and meaningful clinical endpoints, such as adult morbidity and mortality. We then present relevant predictions from lifespan theories that sugge...

Inability to monitor and self-regulate heightened levels of affect lability and affect intensity is associated with a range of mood, anxiety, and personality disorders, psychosomatic symptoms and socially maladaptive behaviors. Despite the importance of these aspects of affective regulation, there are no twin study data to shed light on the genetic...

The extent to which individuals generally believe that they can successfully manage their emotions is related to healthy coping and well-being. Nevertheless, it is unclear how this general belief is related to daily affective experiences. In the current study, the relationship between global emotion control beliefs and daily affect reports across 5...

The objective of this study was to examine the role of spousal bereavement and positive emotion in naturally occurring levels of daily cortisol. Analyses were conducted using data from the Midlife in the United States survey and the National Study of Daily Experiences. Baseline assessments of extraversion, neuroticism, trait positive emotion, and t...

Numerous changes in physiological functioning accompany the aging process. Gradual declines in fundamental aspects of the neuroendocrine, cardiovascular, and immune systems contribute to increased risks for morbidity and mortality. Importantly, alterations in physiological processes are not invariant with age but are influenced by individual differ...

The role of racial identity in the stress process was examined in a sample (N = 174) of African American doctoral students and graduates of doctoral programs. Racial discrimination and psychological distress (negative affect, depression, and anxiety) were assessed each day for a period of two weeks. Multilevel random coefficient modeling analyses r...

We assessed whether cumulative risk exposure underlies the relation between early childhood poverty and body mass index (BMI) trajectories. We interviewed youths and their mothers in rural upstate New York (168 boys and 158 girls) from 1995 to 2006 when the youths were aged 9, 13, and 17 years. At each interview, we calculated their BMI-for-age per...

The objectives of the current study were to document the effects of discrimination on Latino mental health and to identify the circumstances by which ethnic identity serves a protective function. Instances of discrimination and depressive symptoms were measured every day for 13 days in a sample of Latino adults (N = 91). Multilevel random coefficie...

The study used a daily process design to examine the role of psychological resilience and positive emotions in the day-to-day experience of pain catastrophizing. A sample of 95 men and women with chronic pain completed initial assessments of neuroticism, psychological resilience, and demographic data, and then completed short diaries regarding pain...

Whereas theoreticians are interested in modeling how bereavement contributes to health, the bulk of research on spousal bereavement is conducted after a loss has occurred. Using prospective longitudinal data, this study examined the extent to which positive emotion following spousal loss varies on the basis of preloss characteristics of the bereave...

Recent years have witnessed a proliferation of research on ethnic identity. To date, this research has been dominated by individual differences methods. Both Gaines, Bunce, Robertson, Wright, Goossens, Heer, et al. (this issue) and Juang and Nguyen's (this issue) examination of the psychometric properties of the Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure (...

Abstract Resilience has numerous meanings in prior research, but generally refers to a pattern of functioning indicative of positive adaptation in the context of significant risk or adversity. Underlying this broad definition are two specific conditions: (a) exposure to significant risks; and (b) evidence of positive adaptation despite serious thre...

Historically, resilience research has been largely the purview of developmental investigators dealing with early childhood and adolescence. This research primarily focused on at-risk children who were exposed to significant and severe life adversities (e.g., extreme poverty, parental mental illness, community violence). The study of resilience in a...

The unique and combined effects of chronic and daily racial discrimination on psychological distress were examined in a sample of 174 African American doctoral students and graduates. Using a daily process design, 5 models of the stress process were tested. Multilevel random coefficient modeling analyses revealed that chronic exposure to racial dis...

Self-management strategies for pain hold substantial promise as a means of reducing pain and improving function among older adults with chronic pain, but their use in this age group has not been well defined. To review the evidence regarding self-management interventions for pain due to musculoskeletal disorders among older adults. We searched the...

This research provided the first empirical investigation of the role of positive affect in moderating the relationship between perceived racism and depressive symptoms. A sample of 215 racial and ethnic minority young adults completed measures of perceived racism, daily race–related stress, positive affect, optimism, and depressive symptoms. Hierar...

In this article, the authors examine the conceptualization and measurement of ethnic identity as a multidimensional, dynamic construct that develops over time through a process of exploration and commitment. The authors discuss the components of ethnic identity that have been studied and the theoretical background for a developmental model of ethni...

Hope is a motivational construct that has been associated with many positive outcomes in children, adolescents, and adults. Although research with the Children’s Hope Scale (CHS) has demonstrated support for the reliability and validity of the CHS with various samples of youth, there is little empirical evidence for its use with Latino youth. The c...

This longitudinal study examined the protective influence of psychological and family factors on academic achievement in 123 Latino college (101 Mexican American, 14 Central American, 8 mixed Mexican/Central American) students. Three cultural resources--ethnic identity, family interdependence, and parental support--were hypothesized as protective f...

This research provided a preliminary investigation of how variations in trait and state hope are associated with positive adaptation to stress in later adulthood. Trait hope and neuroticism were measured by questionnaires and state hope, stress, and negative emotions were assessed daily for 45 days. Results from multilevel random coefficient modeli...

In 3 studies, the authors investigated the functional role of psychological resilience and positive emotions in the stress process. Studies 1a and 1b explored naturally occurring daily stressors. Study 2 examined data from a sample of recently bereaved widows. Across studies, multilevel random coefficient modeling analyses revealed that the occurre...

To estimate frequencies of behaviors not carried out in public view, researchers generally must rely on self-report data. We explored 2 factors expected to influence the decision to reveal: (a) privacy (anonymity vs. confidentiality) and (b) normalization (providing information so that a behavior is reputedly commonplace or rare). We administered a...

Healthy normotensive men and women (N=33) underwent a 60-day diary assessment of emotions and cardiovascular functioning. Individual differences in social connectedness and mood were measured in questionnaires, and positive emotions, negative emotions, systolic blood pressure (SBP), and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) were assessed daily for 60 cons...

The role of daily perceived control was examined in a recently bereaved sample of 34 older adult widows. Trait measures of environmental mastery and stress were measured in questionnaires, and state measures of anxiety, depression, stress, and control were assessed daily over ninety-eight days. Results highlight the critical role of daily control i...

As it has become more widely recognized that increasing numbers of people are living to progressively older ages, it is important to understand the nature of individual traits that promote resilience and well-being in later life, to describe how these traits develop, to identify the factors that threaten and undermine their maintenance, and to eluc...

The role of daily positive emotions in the stress process was examined in a sample of 34 recently bereaved older adult widows. Humor coping and perceived stress were measured in questionnaires, and positive emotions, depression, anxiety, and stress were assessed daily for 98 days. Results highlight the critical role of daily positive emotions in th...

The complexity of positive and negative emotions was examined in a sample of 40 adults between the ages of 60 and 85 years. Participants' emotional experiences were assessed by use of a 30-day assessment protocol. Results suggest that different vulnerability and resilience factors are implicated in the intraindividual experience of positive and neg...

The authors investigated the relationship between adolescent-parent differences in the endorsement of family obligations and adolescent life satisfaction, in families from two differing cultural backgrounds. Surveys were completed by 238 adolescents and their parents, including 135 European-American families and 103 Vietnamese-American families. We...

The authors report preliminary findings supporting the utility of the self-concordance model (K. M. Sheldon & A. J. Elliot, 1999) as an alternative approach to studying depression among Vietnamese American (N = 121) and European American (N = 155) college students. The participants completed measures of personal goals, goal self-concordance, and de...

The authors examined the moderating role of goal cognitions in the process of nicotine dependence in young adult smokers. A college sample of 85 male and 78 female smokers completed measures of nicotine dependence and psychological distress. They also provided cognitive evaluations for goals related to smoking cessation on scales measuring self-eff...

To estimate frequencies of behaviors not carried out in public view, researchers generally must rely on self-report data. We explored 2 factors expected to influence the decision to reveal: (a) privacy (anonymity vs. confidentiality) and (b) normalization (providing information so that a behavior is reputedly commonplace or rare). We administered a...

The goal of this research was to explore the generality of developmental processes related to intergenerational value discrepancies across 701 families from immigrant and non-immigrant groups. In a study involving 471 immigrant families (197 Armenian, 103 Vietnamese, and 171 Mexican) and 230 non-immigrant families (95 African American and 135 Europ...