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Emotional Reactivity to Negative Adult and Peer Events and the Maintenance of Adolescent Depressive Symptoms: a Daily Diary Design

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Abstract

Emotional reactivity to negative interpersonal events has been consistently linked with depressive symptoms in studies with adults. However, little is known about the role that emotional reactivity plays in the maintenance of depressive symptoms during adolescence. A structured diary, administered to 132 economically disadvantaged adolescents (53 % female, 76 % African American) at age 14, measured adolescent daily reports of negative events involving parents, teachers, and peers and ratings of negative and positive affect. We examined the relationship between emotional reactivity (changes in negative and positive affect that correspond with negative events) and the maintenance of depressive symptoms between ages 13 and 15. We also tested unique effects of different types of emotional reactivity, depending on the type of interpersonal event. Results provided support for the emotional reactivity model for negative teacher events: heightened reactivity to negative teacher events was related to the maintenance of depressive symptoms. Findings suggest that adolescents’ emotional reactivity to teachers has important implications for the continuity of depressive symptoms during early adolescence for disadvantaged youth.

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Notes

  1. Due to possible concerns with overlapping content of the depression and negative interpersonal events scales, the depression variables were reconstructed after two items were removed from the CDI and two items were removed from the CESD (e.g., People were unfriendly). The old and new variables were correlated r = 0.99 at both time points and study results were unchanged with the use of the new variables.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the members of the Parent Teen Project for their help with data collection.

This research was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health (RO1-MH59670, to Roger Kobak)

Conflict of Interest

There are no known conflicts of interest associated with this publication and there has been no significant financial support for this work that could have influenced its outcome.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Joanna Herres & E. Stephanie Krauthamer Ewing

  2. University of Delaware, Newark, DE, USA

    Roger Kobak

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  1. Joanna Herres
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  2. E. Stephanie Krauthamer Ewing
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Correspondence to Joanna Herres.

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Herres, J., Ewing, E.S.K. & Kobak, R. Emotional Reactivity to Negative Adult and Peer Events and the Maintenance of Adolescent Depressive Symptoms: a Daily Diary Design. J Abnorm Child Psychol 44, 471–481 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-015-0043-6

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