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Associations among financial well-being, daily relationship tension, and daily affect in two adult cohorts separated by the great recession

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Journal of Social and Personal Relationships
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Financial well-being may be an important context for daily emotional reactivity to relationship tension (e.g., arguments) whose salience varies across historical time or as a function of exposure to economic downturns. This study investigated how emotional reactivity, operationalized as daily fluctuations in negative and positive affect associated with the occurrence of daily relationship tension, varied by financial well-being among those who were and were not exposed to the Great Recession of 2008. Two matched, independent subsamples of partnered individuals from the National Study of Daily Experiences completed identical 8-day diary protocols, one before the Great Recession (n = 587) and one after (n = 351). Individuals reported higher negative affect and lower positive affect on days when relationship tension occurred. Further, results indicated that negative affect reactivity, but not positive affect reactivity, was moderated by both financial well-being and cohort status. For the pre-recession cohort, negative affect reactivity was stronger among those with lower financial well-being. However, among the post-recession cohort, financial well-being did not moderate negative affect reactivity to relationship tension. Findings highlight the utility of considering major societal events, such as economic downturns, to understand variability in emotional reactivity to day-to-day relationship tension in the context of financial well-being, as the salience of financial well-being in the ways relationship tension and negative affect are related on a daily basis appears to vary by historical context.
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Associations among Financial Well-Being, Daily Relationship Tension,
and Daily Affect in Two Adult Cohorts Separated by the Great Recession
August I. C. Jenkins1,2*, Yunying Le1, Agus Surachman3, David M. Almeida1,4, Steffany J.
Fredman1
1Department of Human Development and Family Studies, The Pennsylvania State University,
University Park, PA.
2Department of Human Development and Family Studies, University of Illinois-Urbana
Champaign, Urbana, IL.
3Center for Health and Community, School of Medicine, University of California San Francisco,
San Francisco, CA.
4Center for Healthy Aging, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA.
* Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to August I. C. Jenkins, University
of Illinois-Urbana Champaign, 2009 Christopher Hall, Urbana, IL 61801. E-mail:
aj34@illinois.edu.
Author Note
August I. C. Jenkins https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5971-9787
Yunying Le https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4172-5943
Agus Surachman https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7474-9450
David M. Almeida https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5233-8148
Steffany J. Fredman https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2053-8700
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This work was supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
Research Network and National Institute on Aging Grants P01-AG020166, U19-AG051426, and
R01 AG019239. August I. C. Jenkins is supported by the National Institute on Minority Health
and Health Disparities grant F31MD015215. The content is solely the responsibility of the
authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH. The authors have no
conflicts of interest to disclose. We thank Jacqueline Mogle for her guidance with data analysis.
©2022, SAGE publishing. This paper is not the copy of record and may not exactly replicate the
final, authoritative version of the article. The final article is available at
https://doi.org/10.1177/02654075221105611
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Abstract
Financial well-being may be an important context for daily emotional reactivity to relationship
tension (e.g., arguments) whose salience varies across historical time or as a function of exposure
to economic downturns. This study investigated how emotional reactivity, operationalized as
daily fluctuations in negative and positive affect associated with the occurrence of daily
relationship tension, varied by financial well-being among those who were and were not exposed
to the Great Recession of 2008. Two matched, independent subsamples of partnered individuals
from the National Study of Daily Experiences completed identical 8-day diary protocols, one
before the Great Recession (n = 587) and one after (n = 351). Individuals reported higher
negative affect and lower positive affect on days when relationship tension occurred. Further,
results indicated that negative affect reactivity, but not positive affect reactivity, was moderated
by both financial well-being and cohort status. For the pre-recession cohort, negative affect
reactivity was stronger among those with lower financial well-being. However, among the post-
recession cohort, financial well-being did not moderate negative affect reactivity to relationship
tension. Findings highlight the utility of considering major societal events, such as economic
downturns, to understand variability in emotional reactivity to day-to-day relationship tension in
the context of financial well-being, as the salience of financial well-being in the ways
relationship tension and negative affect are related on a daily basis appears to vary by historical
context.
Keywords: Daily Diary, Emotional Reactivity, Historical Time, Romantic Relationships,
Financial Strain, Family Studies
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Associations among Financial Well-Being, Daily Relationship Tension,
and Daily Affect in Two Adult Cohorts Separated by the Great Recession
A large body of research has established connections between relationship adjustment
and emotional health (Whisman et al., 2021), particularly how stressful everyday relationship
events and tension are related to poorer emotional health (Birditt et al., 2005; Smith et al., 2012).
For instance, previous work has demonstrated the associations between daily marital strain, as
reported by both self and partner, with greater psychological distress for both spouses (Garcia &
Umberson, 2019) and the linkages between relationship tension (e.g., conflict or arguments) with
higher daily negative affect and lower daily positive affect (Tolpin et al., 2006). This work
suggests that individuals are emotionally reactive (i.e., experience changes in daily affect) to the
occurrence of everyday stressful interactions within romantic relationships. However, little is
known about whether individuals susceptibility to such emotional reactivity depends on their
financial well-being (i.e., the subjective perception about their relative financial situation;
Netemeyer et al., 2018), as lower financial well-being could serve as an ambient contextual
stressor that increases individuals risk for poorer daily affect in the face of relationship strain.
Furthermore, it is unknown whether the relevance of one’s financial context for these linkages
varies across historical time, including experiences of economic downturn. As such, questions
remain regarding whether individuals with lower financial well-being are more (or less)
emotionally vulnerable to the occurrence of everyday relationship tension and if there is
variability in this potential vulnerability among those who experienced economic downturns. The
current study expands the literature on intimate relationships and daily affect by investigating the
moderating effect of financial well-being for daily reactivity to relationship tension and
investigates variability in the moderating role of financial well-being across historical time by
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comparing these associations for those who had and had not experienced a major economic
downturnthe Great Recession.
Emotional Reactivity to Daily Relationship Tension and the Role of Financial Well-Being
Daily emotional reactivity to stressful events is considered to be a key mechanism
through which relationship functioning exerts long-term effects on individual health outcomes
(Alonso-Ferres et al., 2020; Farrell & Stanton, 2019; Sbarra & Coan, 2018; Selcuk et al., 2016;
Stanton et al., 2019), with interpersonal tension among the most potent and distressing type of
daily stressors (Birditt et al., 2005; Bolger et al., 1989). Contextual stress, such as low financial
well-being, may contribute to the additional cumulative risks that individuals face every day and,
in turn, affect romantic relationships and their impacts on individuals’ health outcomes (Brock et
al., 2019; Kanter & Proulx, 2021; Neff & Karney, 2004). As highlighted in the vulnerability-
stress-adaptation model (VSA; Karney & Bradbury, 1995) and the family stress model (FSM;
Conger et al., 1990), low financial well-being can act as a risk factor for relationship quality
increasing occurrences of tension, disagreements, and related negative processes. Within the
VSA framework, the contextual stress generated by chronic financial instability can also impede
adaptive relationship processes. Further, the FSM posits that financial pressure is also related to
elevated emotional or psychological distress, potentially generating feelings of anger, sadness, or
frustration (Conger et al., 1990; Masarik & Conger, 2017). Together, these theories suggest the
relevance of financial well-being for the linkages between intimate relationships and emotional
health, where lower levels of financial well-being can serve as a chronic stressor that amplifies
the adverse emotional consequences of negative relationship interactions.
To date, an extensive literature demonstrates the importance of financial well-being for
long-term relationship functioning, emotional health, and the linkages between them (Falconier
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& Jackson, 2020; Sturgeon et al., 2014; Wickrama et al., 2012; Wickrama & O’Neal, 2019).
However, the extant literature on the importance of financial well-being in the daily processes of
emotional reactivity to relationship tension is still relatively limited, and much remains unknown.
For instance, a recent study demonstrated the daily transactions between fluctuations in
relationship functioning and fluctuations in negative and positive affect within a sample of low-
income individuals (Brock et al., 2019). However, the homogeneity of the sample in terms of
their socioeconomic status makes it difficult to determine how variability in financial well-being
is related to differences in affective reactivity to daily relationship tension. Understanding the
role of financial well-being in these daily processes may provide information regarding how
economic factors may increase or decrease individuals’ risk for poorer long-term relational and
emotional outcomes, along with opportunities for intervention via the daily transactions between
relationship tension and daily affect. It could be that stress related to low financial well-being
impedes individuals’ ability to effectively respond to everyday stressful relationship exchanges,
amplifying emotional reactions to relationship tension (Neff & Karney, 2004, 2017). In contrast,
greater financial well-being could attenuate reactivity to relationship tension, as individuals may
be afforded additional time, energy, and resources to invest in their relationships and cope with
everyday relationship tension. Thus, guided by the VSA and FSM frameworks, the first goal of
the current study was to investigate the role of financial well-being in emotional reactivity to
daily relationship tension among partnered individuals.
The Great Recession as a Sociohistorical Context for the Links Between Financial Well-
Being and Reactivity to Daily Relationship Tension
Importantly, investigating the role of financial well-being in the linkages between daily
relationship tension and daily affect requires situating these associations within their historical
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context. That is, perceptions of financial well-being or its relevance for daily life may shift
throughout historical time, which can be marked by the occurrence of major societal events.
Indeed, the life course framework (Elder et al., 2003) postulates that the occurrence of historical
circumstances and events can differentially influence the social pathways and daily life of
individuals, calling for work that uncovers how macrosocial processes affect microsocial
phenomena that directly impact individual well-being and development (Elder & Caspi, 1988).
Times of societal-level deprivation, such as an economic recession, represent an important
historical context known to be related to intimate relationships and daily affect. For example,
families’ economic loss from the Great Depression was associated with increased marital discord
and changes in personality characteristics related to emotional instability, particularly for men
(Liker & Elder, 1983). However, previous work has not considered the associations between
relationships and affect at the daily level, and knowledge of the relevance of financial well-being
for these daily associations in the context of economic downturns is limited, making it difficult to
determine how financial well-being and daily emotional reactivity to relationship tension may
intersect in unique ways during different historical epochs to leave individuals more susceptible
(or robust) to these linkages.
One potentially relevant historical context for understanding the linkages between
financial well-being and emotional reactivity to relationship tension is the Great Recession.
Scholars have noted that exposure to the Great Recession was related to elevated stress in
everyday life. The Great Recession was the longest and deepest U.S. recession since World War
II, with unemployment peaking at 10% and 55% of the labor force experiencing work-related
disruption. From December 2007 to June 2009, poverty rates increased to over 15%, household
wealth decreased on average by 20% (with a quarter of American households losing at least 75%
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of their net worth), the housing foreclosure rate peaked at 1.8%, and bankruptcy filings rose by
74% (Duignan, 2019; Ellen Gould & Dastrup, 2012; Pew Research Center, 2009, 2010; Kochhar,
2020). As a result of the Great Recession, many people experienced job loss and layoffs,
difficulty finding a job, or working multiple jobs to make ends meet (Almeida et al., 2020),
contributing to the historical trend of widening socioeconomic disparities in the United States
(Glei et al., 2019). There is also evidence that daily life in the post-Great Recession period was
characterized by higher exposure to, and severity of, daily stressors (Almeida et al., 2020). Using
data from the Health and Retirement Study, Wilkinson (2016) showed that the occurrence of the
Great Recession was associated with worsened financial situations for Americans, with changes
in individuals’ financial context a robust predictor of psychological health. Together, this points
to the Great Recession as a stressful sociohistorical context with the potential to amplify linkages
among financial well-being, intimate relationships, and daily affect.
Previous studies utilizing the VSA and FSM frameworks demonstrated the long-term
consequences of recession-related adversities on psychological distress through increases in
marital disagreements and also found that low-income individuals were more psychologically
vulnerable to recession-related hardship (Ascgil et al., 2020). However, it is unknown whether
the relevance of financial well-being for the daily connections between relationship tension and
affect may have shifted in the context of the Great Recession. Better understanding of the ways
the Great Recession may be related to the linkages between financial well-being and daily
emotional reactivity to relational tension may facilitate the development of strategies to support
relational and emotional health outcomes for individuals during times of major societal stress.
Capitalizing on daily diary data collected before and after the Great Recession, the current study
was also designed to examine cohort differences in the linkages between financial well-being
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and emotional reactivity to relationship tension in two adult cohorts separated by the Great
Recession.
Current Study
The current study leveraged data from the National Study of Daily Experiences from two
different cohorts recruited before and after the Great Recession (2004 versus 2011). As depicted
in Figure 1, the goals of the current study were to 1) investigate emotional reactivity to daily
relationship tension, examining the potential moderating role of financial well-being in this
relation and 2) examine cohort differences (pre- versus post-recession) in the moderating role of
financial well-being on emotional reactivity to daily relationship tension. We hypothesized that,
in general, individuals would report higher negative affect and lower positive affect on days
when relationship tension occurred compared to tension-free days, with this relation being
stronger among those with lower financial well-being. We also hypothesized that the moderating
role of financial well-being in emotional reactivity to daily relationship tension would be even
stronger among the post-recession cohort relative to the pre-recession cohort.
Method
Data for the current investigation come from the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS;
http://www.midus.wisc.edu) study, a longitudinal epidemiological study of health and aging. All
data are publicly available at https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/ web/ICPSR/series/203. The MIDUS
daily diary substudy, the National Study of Daily Experiences (NSDE; Almeida et al., 2009),
includes data from the second wave of data collection beginning in 2004 with the core
longitudinal sample of participants (NSDE 2,1 pre-recession cohort) and another sample of adults
who were recruited for MIDUS beginning in 2011 to “refresh” the participant pool (NSDE
Refresher, post-recession cohort). Data from participants in the NSDE 2 and Refresher were
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utilized for the current investigation, with all individuals providing data at only one timepoint.
Participants
Of the 2,804 participants who completed NSDE 2 and the NSDE Refresher (NSDE 2 n =
2,022 participants; NSDE Refresher n = 782), individuals who were not married or cohabiting (n
= 862) were excluded from the current sample. For the remaining 1,942 participants, we utilized
propensity score matching using the exact matching procedure (Randolph et al., 2014) to ensure
that the two subsamples were similar in terms of age, gender, education, race, and marital status
(i.e., whether married or cohabitating) for a more robust comparison between the two cohorts
(see Supplement for details). Thus, the final analytic sample included 938 participants (n = 587
from NSDE 2, pre-Great Recession cohort; n = 351 from the NSDE Refresher, post-Great
Recession cohort).
The majority of participants (91%) identified as non-Hispanic White. The remainder
identified as Black (3%), Hispanic (4%), Native American or Alaska Native Aleutian
Islander/Eskimo (1%), and Asian (< 1%); 3% reported their race as other or unspecified. Most of
the sample (99%) was married, with the remaining 25 individuals in cohabitating relationships (<
1%). Participants ranged from 33 to 75 years of age (M = 52.32; SD = 10.10) and reported an
education ranging from some high school to doctoral-level, with the majority of participants
holding a bachelor’s degree. Approximately half the participants identified as women (52%
women; 48% men), and almost all participants identified as heterosexual (< 1% gay; 1%
bisexual).
Procedure
Details on the recruitment and study procedures for MIDUS are described elsewhere
(Ryff & Krueger, 2018). Participants were originally recruited from the continental U.S. for
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MIDUS via random digit dialing and completed computer-assisted personal interviews at
baseline. A randomly selected subset of participants was contacted approximately eight months
after the baseline assessment to complete the daily diary study. NSDE participants completed
telephone interviews in the evening with trained interviewers using computer-assisted telephone
interview programming for eight consecutive days (Almeida et al., 2009). The two cohorts
completed identical 8-day diary study protocols, and all study protocols and procedures were
approved by the Institutional Review Boards at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and The
Pennsylvania State University. All participants provided written informed consent before being
assessed.
Measures
Daily Relationship Tension
Each day, participants reported on tension that occurred within their relationships using
three items from the Daily Inventory of Stressful Events (Almeida et al., 2002). Participants
answered: “Did you have an argument or disagreement with [your partner/spouse]?”; “Did
anything happen that you could have argued about but you decided to let pass in order to avoid a
disagreement?”; and "Other than what you’ve already mentioned, did anything else happen to
[your partner/spouse] that turned out to be stressful for you? If participants answered yes to any
of these questions, they were considered to have experienced relationship tension that day. Daily
relationship tension was dummy coded (1 = yes, 0 = no) to indicate the occurrence of day-level
relationship tension.
Daily Affect
Measures of negative and positive affect were developed for the MIDUS study (Mroczek
& Kolarz, 1998; Watson et al., 1988). Participants indicated how often they experienced various
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negative and positive emotions during the day using a 5-point scale ranging from 0 (None of the
time) to 4 (All the time). Negative affect was indexed across 14 negative emotions (e.g.,
“nervous,” “angry,” “lonely”). Positive affect was indexed across 13 positive emotions (e.g.,
“cheerful,” “in good spirits,” “satisfied”). Items were averaged within domains so that higher
scores reflected greater negative and positive affect, respectively. The repeated measures
reliability (Hox et al., 2010) was .90 for negative affect and .96 for positive affect.
Financial Well-Being
Financial well-being was assessed during a baseline telephone survey before the daily
portion of the study using a single item: “How would you rate your financial situation these
days?” Participants rated their perceived financial well-being using a Likert-type scale ranging
from 0 (worst possible financial situation) to 10 (best possible financial situation).
Attrition and Missing Data
There was little attrition throughout the study. In the pre-recession cohort, participants
completed a mean of 7.47 (of 8) daily interviews (SD = 1.38) and, in the post-recession cohort,
participants completed a mean of 7.44 daily interviews (SD = 1.45). Across study variables,
missingness was less than 5%. Little’s Missing Completely at Random test (Little, 1988)
indicated that the data were not missing completely at random ( (12) = 68.57, p < .001). We
explored all key variables, but only variables related to demographic (i.e., education, work
status) and cohort status were related to missingness (ps < .001). Because these variables were
included as covariates in the model, as described below, the data were treated as missing at
random, which meets the assumptions of Maximum Likelihood approaches.
Data Analysis
Data analyses were not pre-registered; thus, findings from data analyses may be
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understood as largely exploratory. We examined descriptive statistics (means, standard
deviations, and correlation) among study variables for both cohorts. Then, multivariate analyses
were conducted in SAS (version 9.4, SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC) using multilevel modeling via
PROC MIXED to account for the nested structure of the data (i.e., days nested within
individuals). First, unconditional models were conducted to calculate the intraclass correlation
coefficients (i.e., ICC; between-person level variance/total variance). Then, two-level models
were conducted to test daily relationship tension as a predictor of daily affect (within-person) and
to test the moderating role of financial well-being and cohort status in this within-person link.
Daily relationship tension was dummy coded (1 = yes, 0 = no) to indicate the occurrence of
relationship tension that day. Negative and positive affect were tested as outcomes in separate
models. Interaction terms between financial well-being and daily relationship tension were
included to evaluate whether financial well-being moderated daily affective reactivity to
relationship tension. Financial well-being scores were group-mean centered within the NSDE 2
and NSDE Refresher cohorts, respectively, before creating the interaction terms. Three-way
interactions (i.e., Financial Well-Being X Daily Relationship Tension X Recession Cohort) were
included to test whether the interactive associations among financial well-being, daily
relationship tension, and daily affect varied by recession cohort (pre-recession cohort = -1; post-
recession cohort = 1), accounting for all lower-order effects and two-way interactions.
Significant three-way interactions were probed for pre- and post-recession cohorts for the
moderating effect of financial well-being for each cohort, respectively. Significant two-way
interactions between financial well-being and daily relationship tension were probed at 1 SD
above and below the mean of financial well-being. We also conducted regions of significance
(RoS) analysis to determine the levels of financial well-being at which the within-person
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associations between relationship tension and affect were significant using an online
computational tool for interaction effects (http://www.quantpsy.org; Preacher et al., 2006). A
random effect was included for daily relationship tension to allow individuals to vary from one
another in their event-related fluctuations in affect. Maximum likelihood was used as the
estimation method, and standard variance components were specified for all models. At the
between-person level, the grand-mean centered person average of daily relationship tension was
also included in the model to account for between-person differences in the proportion of days
tension occurred as well as the corresponding two-way and three-way interactions with financial
well-being and cohort status. Age (years), gender (-1 = man, 1 = woman), education (1 = no
school/some grade school to 12 = Ph.D., J.D., or other terminal degrees), marital status (0 =
married, 1 = not married), and the effect of day were included as covariates in the final models.
Results
Preliminary Analyses
Sample demographics and descriptive statistics for the study variables are reported in
Table 1. Compared to the pre-recession cohort, those in the post-recession cohort reported
significantly more relationship tension across the study days. Across both cohorts, individuals
reported moderate levels of financial well-being, relatively low negative affect, and moderate
levels of positive affect. Compared to the pre-recession cohort, the post-recession cohort showed
significantly lower levels of financial well-being, higher levels of daily negative affect, and
lower levels of daily positive affect. Table 2 shows the correlations among financial well-being,
daily relationship tension, and daily affect (averaged within-person) for both the pre-recession
and post-recession cohorts. Across both cohorts, the average level of daily relationship tension
was significantly correlated with higher negative affect and lower positive affect. The average
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level of relationship tension was also significantly negatively correlated with financial well-
being for the post-recession cohort. The results of the unconditional models indicated that 53%
of the variation in negative affect and 74% of the variation in positive affect were due to
between-person differences (i.e., ICC).
Emotional Reactivity to Daily Relationship Tension, Moderation by Financial Well-Being,
and Cohort Differences
Negative Affect
Table 3 displays the results from the multilevel models predicting daily negative affect
from daily relationship tension, financial well-being, and cohort status. The random effect of
relationship tension was significant, indicating that individuals varied from one another in their
event-related fluctuations in negative affect. Accounting for between-person effects, the main
effect of relationship tension (within-person) indicated that, on average, individuals reported
significantly higher negative affect on days when relationship tension occurred compared to
tension-free days.
There was a significant three-way interaction among financial well-being, relationship
tension (within-person), and cohort status, indicating that the moderating effect of financial well-
being differed significantly between the pre- and post-recession cohorts. Figure 2 depicts the
associations between financial well-being and negative affect reactivity to daily relationship
tension for each cohort. Among those in the pre-recession cohort, financial well-being
significantly moderated the within-person association between relationship tension and negative
affect such that the association was stronger at lower levels of financial well-being (Est. = -0.02,
SE = 0.01, p = .029). RoS analysis further revealed that, among the pre-Great Recession cohort,
this within-person association was significant at all levels of financial well-being (i.e., scores of
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10 and below; see Figure 3). Compared to individuals with higher financial well-being (1 SD
above the mean), individuals with lower financial well-being (1 SD below the mean) scored .15
higher on negative affect on days they experienced relationship tension compared to tension-free
daysa difference equal to half the standard deviation of negative affect (SD = .29). In contrast,
results revealed that, among the post-recession cohort, financial well-being did not significantly
moderate the within-person association between relationship tension and negative affect (Est. =
0.01, SE = 0.01, p = .201). Thus, negative affect reactivity to daily relationship tension was not
conditional on financial well-being among those in the post-recession cohort.
Positive Affect
The random effect of relationship tension was significant, indicating that individuals
varied from one another in their event-related fluctuations in positive affect (see Table 3).
Accounting for between-person effects, the main effect of relationship tension (within-person)
indicated that, on average, individuals reported lower positive affect on days when relationship
tension occurred.
There were no significant interactions in this model. Taken together, these findings
suggest that event-related fluctuations in positive affect did not vary by financial well-being for
either cohort.
Discussion
To our knowledge, this is the first study to connect daily measures of interpersonal
relationship functioning and affect with measures of financial well-being and markers of
historical time (though, because the current study was not pre-registered, findings may be
regarded as exploratory). Using two samples of partnered individuals matched on age, gender,
education, race, and marital status, one cohort assessed before and the other assessed after the
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Great Recession, we found that the post-recession cohort was characterized by a more stressful
daily life (more daily relationship tension, higher negative affect, and lower positive daily affect
relative to the pre-recession cohort). For both cohorts, individuals reported higher negative affect
and lower positive affect on days when relationship tension occurred. Further, we observed that
the moderating effect of financial well-being on daily emotional reactivity to relationship tension
differed between the pre-recession and post-recession cohorts for negative affect. For the pre-
recession cohort, the association between daily relationship tension and greater negative affect
was stronger among those with lower financial well-being. In contrast, and contrary to our
hypothesis, for the post-recession cohort, daily negative affective reactivity to relationship
tension did not vary by financial well-being.
Financial Well-Being, Relationship Tension, and Negative Affect: Differences Across
Historical Time
Affective reactivity to everyday stressful events, above and beyond the level of negative
affect, is predictive of long-term physical and mental health outcomes (Charles et al., 2013;
Piazza et al., 2013). In fact, previous studies have shown that a unit increase in negative affective
reactivity is associated with a 10% increase in the risk of chronic health conditions and 56%
greater odds of reporting an affective disorder 10 years later. The life course perspective (Elder
et al., 2003) highlights the relevance of macrosocial historical contexts for the occurrence of
specific patterns of microsocial processes and individuals’ trajectories of well-being. Thus,
investigation of factors that may increase or decrease individuals’ risk for poorer health and the
times in which individuals are more susceptible (or robust) to these linkages across different
historical epochs may elucidate ways to promote long-term well-being. Results from the current
study support the incorporation of markers of historical time, such as the occurrence of major
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societal events, as broader contextual indicators of external stress to understand variability in
emotional reactivity to daily relationship tension across levels of financial well-being. The ways
relationship tension and negative affect are related on a daily basis may vary as a function of
financial well-being, but the salience of financial well-being in these associations is not universal
and itself appears to vary by historical context.
Consistent with the VSA model and FSM (Conger et al., 1990; Karney & Bradbury,
1995), which predict poorer relationship functioning and subsequent individual health in the
context of lower financial resources, we found that, prior to the Great Recession, individuals
with lower financial well-being exhibited greater daily emotional reactivity to relationship
tension (approximately half a standard deviation more of negative affect). To better understand
the relevance of this difference, and given the well-established literature documenting age-
related decreases in negative affect (Charles et al., 2010; Scott et al., 2017), we compared this
difference to the effect of age on negative affect.2 We found that, on days individuals
experienced tension in their relationships, the difference in negative affect between those with
higher levels of financial well-being and those with lower levels of financial well-being was
equivalent to losing all the advantages of age-related reductions in daily negative affect, as this
difference was similar to the difference in negative affect between individuals in the current
study who were 43 years apart. Given these findings, it seems that, specifically among the pre-
recession cohort, financial well-being was an important contextual factor for individuals’
emotional reactions to daily relationship tensions. Individuals with lower financial well-being
may have experienced their financial circumstances as a chronic stressor that depleted them of
emotional and tangible resources to cope with other stressors in their environments, such as
negative relationship interactions, resulting in amplified reactivity to relationship tension. In
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contrast, individuals with greater financial well-being during this period of relative societal
prosperity may have had relatively greater access to resources (e.g., time, energy, opportunities)
that helped buffer them emotionally from relationship tension.
Inconsistent with theory, we found that individuals in the post-recession cohort exhibited
negative affect reactivity to relationship tension but that the degree of reactivity did not vary as a
function of financial well-being. One explanation for this unexpected finding is that the societal-
level economic uncertainty created by the Recession dampened the protective effects of financial
well-being, as individuals with higher financial well-being perceived or experienced a loss of
their resources and security/status. This is consistent with Liker and Elder’s (1983) notion that
relationships become tense and more strained when individuals must adapt to stressful
circumstances to which they are unaccustomed, such as experiencing the effects of major
economic downturns. As such, individuals with higher financial well-being may have
demonstrated greater reactivity to relationship tension similar to that of individuals with lower
financial well-being.
At the same time, it is important to note that the Great Recession coincided with other
historical changes that also could have affected daily processes. For instance, the rise of
modernization and individualization throughout the 20th century has been connected with
increases in social isolation and unpredictability in daily life (Almeida et al., 2020). These
changes may have had universal impacts on perceptions of financial well-being that were
especially pronounced for the post-recession cohort as they were assessed later into the century
when these changes were more widespread than for the pre-recession cohortresulting in a
similar modifying effect of financial well-being for daily reactivity to relationship tension for
individuals in the post-recession cohort. Theoretical models that describe the linkages among
20
financial well-being, relationship tension, and negative affect (e.g., VSA model, FSM) should be
expanded to address how these linkages exist within the broader sociohistorical context of time
and to discuss historical variation in the moderating role of financial well-being, potentially
incorporating additional aspects of life course theory to explain the relevance of major economic
downturns and other historical changes for shifts in the meaning of financial well-being over
time. Providing such additional theoretical nuance will enhance explanations for other cohort
differences that may be observed in the linkages between financial well-being and negative
affective reactivity to relationship tension and yield directions for future research.
Relationship Tension and Positive Affect
The association between relationship tension and positive affect was consistent across
financial well-being and cohort status. One reason for this may be the relatively stable levels of
positive affect throughout the 8-day study protocol. Indeed, the ICC indicated that the majority
of variation in positive affect existed at the between-person level rather than at the within-person
level. Consequently, the stability of positive affect over time may have limited the ability to
detect cross-level interactions that might exist between relationship tension and financial well-
being or cohort status to predict daily positive affect. Future research that assesses positive
dimensions of daily affect over a longer period (e.g., a 14-day daily diary study) may capture
more variability in daily functioning and help to further clarify whether the associations between
relationship tension and positive, but not negative, affect are truly robust to the effects of
financial well-being and socio-historical markers of time.
Future Directions for Integrating Daily Measures with Historical Time
Results from the current study may have implications for examining the connections
among financial well-being, relationship tension, and daily affect during the emergence of other
21
major historical events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Scholars have noted that the pandemic
has increased individuals’ reliance on intimate partners due to being isolated at home with their
families for long periods of time (Stanley & Markman, 2020; Williamson, 2020). As a result,
romantic relationship quality and its implications for individual emotional well-being may be
particularly salient in this context. One study found that, on average, the pandemic was
associated with positive changes in individuals’ attributions for romantic partners’ negative
behaviors but that, among individuals who experienced higher levels of relationship conflict,
they demonstrated more negative attributions over time (Williamson, 2020). Although the study
did not find a moderating effect of financial status on these relational attributions, this study
assessed individuals’ global perceptions of their partners’ behaviors over 20 weeks; thus,
questions remain concerning the role of financial well-being in daily relationship functioning and
its connection to individual psychological well-being. Additionally, future work should be
intentional about examining these processes among racial and ethnic minorities, who have been
disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic (Abedi et al., 2021; Tai et al., 2021) and
are already disproportionately impacted by socioeconomic disparities. Moreover, utilizing an
intersectional lens (Levine & Breshears, 2019) to capture the heterogeneity that exists in social
disadvantage across race and social class will help uncover additional nuance in the ways these
factors may converge to place individuals who hold multiple marginalized identities as most
vulnerable during particular sociohistorical periods. Finally, future research that integrates
measures of historical time with assessments of financial well-being and affective reactivity to
relationship tension will require intensive, repeated data from large samples to capture these
processes and detect effects and should also be cautious in interpreting significant findings, given
the potential for these type of analyses to be limited by spurious interactive effects (Aguinis et
22
al., 2013; Mathieu et al., 2012).
Limitations
The current investigation has several methodological strengths, including the use of two
large national subsamples of partnered individuals matched on demographic characteristics,
integration of daily data from individuals assessed prior to the Great Recession and those
assessed after, and examination of both negative and positive aspects of daily affect. However,
the study findings should be considered in light of its limitations. First, given that MIDUS is not
a nationally representative sample of the U.S. population and that majority of the participants
were White, our findings may not be generalizable to other racial and ethnic minority
populations in the U.S. Additional research is needed to examine how the linkages among
financial well-being, daily relationship tension, and daily affect differ by historical time using
more diverse samples. Second, although participants completed measures regarding their daily
interactions with their spouses/partners, we utilized a single measure of the occurrence of
relationship tension, which does not account for the quantity or intensity of these interactions.
Further, we did not have data from their romantic partners, which precludes the ability to assess
partner effects in the associations between relationship tension and daily affect. Future work
should include a comprehensive daily assessment of interactions between both romantic partners
and examine these linkages in a dyadic context. Third, the measures of daily affect in the current
study stem from Western conceptualizations of negative and positive emotions. Future work that
utilizes other measures of daily affect may yield information about the associations among
financial well-being, relationship tension, and affect that is more representative of other cultural
orientations. The current measure of financial well-being was also a self-report measure based on
subjective perceptions of financial status, which may have inflated associations due to shared
23
method variance. Additional research that includes objective measures of financial status may
provide greater clarity regarding the associations assessed in the current study. Fourth, the
current analysis capitalized on data from separate samples from different decades to test for
cohort differences. We used a matched design to compare samples with similar characteristics;
however, the differences found between the cohorts could also be attributable to other factors
besides the occurrence of the Great Recession. Moreover, because we examined cohort
differences in the moderation of emotional reactivity to relationship tension by financial well-
being, we were not able to speak to the heterogeneity that existed among those with lower
financial well-being specifically due to hardship from the Great Recession. However, this may
be a key area of investigation for future research. Finally, although we found a significant cohort
difference in the moderating role of financial well-being in the associations between relationship
tension and negative affect, we did not find an overall cohort difference in negative affective
reactivity to relationship tension. Given the large sample size and the number of parameters
included in each model, the cohort differences in the moderating role of financial well-being
observed in the current study may be spurious. As such, the results should be interpreted with
caution and viewed as an initial inquiry into this area of investigation that underscores the need
for additional research and focused data collection.
Implications
These limitations notwithstanding, the findings from this study have theoretical, clinical,
and policy implications. First, social and family theories that consider the associations among
financial well-being, relationship functioning, and individual psychological adjustment (i.e.,
VSA, FSM) may need to be refined to discuss how variation in these linkages may exist across
markers of historical time and individuals’ experiences due to major societal events,
24
acknowledging the contextual relevance of such events to give meaning to financial well-being
and its moderating role in emotional reactivity. Such expansions would enhance future research
by providing specificity concerning the individuals who may be relatively more vulnerable to
poorer individual psychological health and the times during which these individuals may be most
susceptible. Regarding clinical practice, given the associations between relationship tension and
greater affective reactivity to relationship tension in multiple models for both cohorts,
practitioners working with individuals or couples can assist partners in developing strategies
(e.g., cognitive reappraisals, communication skills) to buffer the consequence of negative or
hostile relationship interactions on daily affect. Further, clinicians and practitioners can assess
individuals’ perceptions of their financial well-being, particularly following macroeconomic
crises or other major historical events, and assist them in recognizing the ways these perceptions
may contribute to their emotional and relational functioning. Regarding public policy, additional
attention is needed to the connections among financial well-being, romantic relationships, and
daily affect. Policy initiatives and legislation aimed at promoting financial well-being or
providing additional economic resources in response to societal-level financial crises may benefit
both the emotional and relational experiences of romantic partners.
Conclusion
This study illustrates the linkages between financial well-being and affective reactivity to
daily relationship tension and the importance of considering historical context, such as the Great
Recession, when examining such daily processes. The current findings suggest that the
moderating effect of financial well-being in the daily linkages between relationship tension and
negative affect (but not positive affect) can vary across historical time. Future work that
integrates daily measures of relationship functioning and affect with measures of financial well-
25
being and sociohistorical conceptualizations of time will advance the current understanding of
how everyday relationship processes are related to emotional adjustment, which individuals are
most vulnerable to negative relationship processes, and how this may change over time.
26
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Footnotes
1 The first wave of the National Study of Daily Experiences (i.e., NSDE 1) did not include
assessments of positive affect. Thus, for this study, we utilized data from the second wave (i.e.,
NSDE 2) to test the association between relationship tension and both daily negative and positive
affect for individuals prior to the Great Recession.
2 We used the age coefficient in the same model to calculate how many unit changes in age (i.e.,
years) it would take to approximate the coefficient for the difference in negative affect on
relationship tension days between those with higher financial well-being and those with lower
financial well-being (i.e., those 1 SD above and 1 SD below the mean of financial well-being,
respectively; Est. = -.15). This difference in negative affect between those with higher and lower
financial well-being was equivalent to a 43-year age difference in negative affect.
35
Table 1
Sample Demographics and Descriptive Statistics of Study Variables for Partnered Individuals in Pre-
Great Recession (NSDE 2) and Post-Great Recession (NSDE Refresher) Cohorts
M (SD)
t / 2
Pre-Great Recession
(NSDE 2)
n = 587
Post-Great Recession
(NSDE Refresher)
n = 351
Women (%)
52.64
51.94
0.00
Age
52.63 (9.98)
51.78 (10.28)
1.38
Educationa
7.84 (2.26)
8.18 (2.30)
-1.90
Latino (%)
3.75
4.06
0.05
Black (%)
2.73
3.61
0.41
Married b (%)
99.66
99.66
0.00
Income
$91,614.01
(63,255.98)
$105,981.59
(65,068.43)
-9.07***
Working (%)
57.17
59.53
0.38
Relationship Tension
(% of days)
10.11%
13.38%
-8.07***
Daily Affect
Negative
0.17 (0.29)
0.20 (0.32)
-3.48***
Positive
2.72 (0.75)
2.59 (0.77)
6.90***
Financial Well-Beingc
6.76 (1.94)
6.32 (2.11)
8.88***
Note: M = mean; SD = standard deviation.
a1 = No School/Some Grade School (grades 1-6), 12 = Ph.D., Ed.D., M.D., D.D.S., LL.B., LL.D.,
J.D., or Other Professional Degree.
b Percentage of sample married relative to those cohabitating.
c 0 = worst possible financial situation, 10 = best possible financial situation.
* p < .05. ** p < .01. ***p < .001.
36
Note. N = 938 participants. Correlations for the pre-Great Recession cohort are shown above the
diagonal, and correlations for the post-Great Recession cohort are shown below the diagonal.
* p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.
Table 2
Correlations among Relationship Tension, Daily Affect, and Financial Well-Being for Pre-
Great Recession (NSDE 2) and Post-Great Recession (NSDE Refresher) Cohorts
Relationship
Tension
Negative
Affect
Positive
Affect
Financial Well-
Being
Relationship Tension
-
.21***
-.16***
-.14***
Negative Affect
.19***
-
-.46***
-.18***
Positive Affect
-.14***
-.49***
-
.25***
Financial Well-being
-.16***
-.16***
.19***
-
37
Table 3.
Affective Reactivity to Daily Relationship Tension by Financial Well-Being and Great Recession Cohort
Negative Affect
Positive Affect
Parameter
Est.
SE
95% CI
p-value
Est.
SE
95% CI
p-value
Fixed Effects
Intercept
0.39
0.05
[0.29, 0.49]
<.001***
2.04
0.15
[1.75, 2.32]
<.001***
Age a
0.00
0.00
[0.00, 0.00]
<.001***
0.02
0.00
[0.01, 0.02]
<.001***
Gender 1, b
0.02
0.01
[0.00, 0.03]
.015*
-0.01
0.02
[-0.05, 0.03]
.746
Education2
0.00
0.00
[0.00, 0.01]
.526
-0.02
0.01
[-0.04, 0.00]
.053
Marital Status3
-0.02
0.12
[-0.25, 0.20]
.836
0.48
0.32
[-0.16, 1.11]
.142
Financial Well-Being
-0.02
0.00
[-0.02, -0.01]
<.001***
0.06
0.01
[0.04, 0.08]
<.001***
Recession Cohort 4
0.00
0.01
[-0.01, 0.02]
.720
-0.02
0.02
[-0.06, 0.03]
.469
Financial Well-Being X
Recession Cohort
0.00
0.00
[-0.01, 0.01]
.599
-0.01
0.01
[-0.03, 0.01]
.342
Day c
-0.01
0.00
[-0.01, -0.01]
<.001***
-0.01
0.00
[-0.01, 0.00]
.008**
Day X Recession Cohort d
0.00
0.00
[0.00, 0.00]
.829
-0.01
0.00
[-0.01, 0.00]
.000***
Relationship Tension (WP)
0.13
0.01
[0.10, 0.15]
<.001***
-0.14
0.02
[-0.18, -0.10]
<.001***
Relationship Tension (WP) X
Financial Well-Being
0.00
0.01
[-0.02, 0.01]
.570
-0.01
0.01
[-0.03, 0.01]
.345
Relationship Tension (WP) X
Recession Cohort
-0.01
0.01
[-0.03, 0.02]
.673
0.01
0.02
[-0.03, 0.04]
.776
Relationship Tension (WP) X
Financial Well-Being X
Recession Cohort e
0.02
0.01
[0.00, 0.03]
.015*
0.00
0.01
[-0.02, 0.01]
.602
Relationship Tension (BP)
0.22
0.05
[0.12, 0.32]
<.001***
-0.38
0.15
[-0.66, -0.09]
.010*
Relationship Tension (BP) X
Financial Well-Being
-0.01
0.03
[-0.08, 0.05]
.898
0.07
0.06
[-0.05, 0.19]
.240
38
Relationship Tension (BP) X
Recession Cohort
-0.06
0.05
[-0.16, 0.04]
.251
0.12
0.15
[-0.17, 0.40]
.423
Relationship Tension (BP) X
Financial Well-Being X
Recession Cohortf
-0.05
0.02
[-0.09, 0.00]
.036*
0.06
0.06
[-0.06, 0.17]
.362
Random Effects
Residual Variance
0.04
0.00
[0.04, 0.04]
<.001***
0.14
0.00
[0.14, 0.15]
<.001***
Intercept Variance
0.04
0.00
[0.04, 0.05]
<.001***
0.37
0.02
[0.33, 0.40]
<.001***
Relationship Tension (WP)
0.05
0.01
[0.04, 0.06]
<.001***
0.04
0.01
[0.02, 0.06]
<.001***
Note: Est. = estimate; SE = standard error; CI = confidence interval; WP within-person effect; BP = between-person effect; Effects of
Relationship Tension (WP), Relationship Tension (WP) X Financial Well-Being, and Relationship Tension (WP) X Financial Well-
Being X Recession Cohort were the main effects of interest.
* p < .05. ** p < .01. ***p < .001.
1 Men = -1; Women = 1
2 1 = No School/Some Grade School (grades 1-6), 12 = Ph.D., Ed.D., M.D., D.D.S., LL.B., LL.D., J.D., or Other Professional Degree.
3 Married = 0; Not married = 1
4 Pre-Great Recession Cohort = -1; Post-Great Recession Cohort = 1
a The absolute value of the estimate for negative affect was -0.00347 [95% CI: -0.00494, -0.00200] and was rounded to 0.00 [95% CI:
0.00, 0.00].
b The absolute value of the confidence interval for negative affect was [0.00360, 0.03272] and was rounded to [0.00, 0.03].
c The absolute value of the confidence interval for positive affect was [-0.00975, -0.00149] and was rounded to [-0.01, 0.00].
39
d The absolute value of the confidence interval for positive affect was [-0.01165, -0.00339] and was rounded to [-0.01, 0.00].
e The absolute value of the confidence interval for negative affect was [0.00299, 0.02795] and was rounded to [0.00, 0.03].
f The absolute value of the confidence interval for negative affect was [-0.09009, -0.00323] and was rounded to [-0.09, 0.00].
40
Figure 1. Goals of the current study.
41
Figure 2. The within-person association between the daily occurrence of relationship tension and daily negative affect at low (-1 SD)
versus high (+1 SD) levels of financial well-being for cohorts of partnered individuals who were or were not exposed to the Great
Recession.
0
0.5
Days without Relationship
Tension
Days with Relationship
Tension
Negative Affect
Pre-Recession Cohort
Low Financial Stability
High Financial Stability
Low Financial Well-Being
High Financial Well-
Being
0
0.5
Days without
Relationship Tension
Days with Relationship
Tension
Negative Affect
Post-Recession Cohort
Days without
Relationship Tension
Days with
Relationship Tension
Days without
Relationship Tension
Days with
Relationship Tension
42
Figure 3. Regions of significance plot depicting the marginal effect of relationship tension on daily negative affect (i.e., simple slope
of relationship tension) for the pre-recession cohort across the possible range of financial well-being. Shaded area represents the 95%
confidence interval for the marginal effect.
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