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Category: Project

Description: Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) have lasting impact on everyday emotional experiences in adulthood, with extant evidence linking ACEs to elevated emotional reactivity. However, findings are mostly based on reactivity to negative daily events (i.e., stressors) and its moderation by cumulative ACEs (where individual adversities are summed into a total score), which overlooks adversity-specific associations and reactivity to other types of daily events. This study therefore examined cumulative and individual ACEs as moderators of emotional reactivity to positive and negative daily events. Data was drawn from the National Study of Daily Experiences 2 (NSDE-II), collected 2004-2009, whereupon middle-aged and older adults (N= 2,022; Mage= 56.25; range: 35–86; 57% female) reported daily events and affect on eight consecutive evenings. Multi-level models were used to estimate the moderating role of ACEs for within-person associations between positive/negative events and affect. We found that cumulative ACEs and a number of individual adversities (specifically those characterised by abuse but not by neglect or household challenge/dysfunction), were associated with elevated emotional reactivity to positive and negative daily events.