Kyoungmin Cho

Objectives: The extant literature suggests that spending time helping others is associated with both beneficial and detrimental effects on givers’ emotional experiences. To reconcile these findings, the current study examined the daily- and monthly-level associations between spending time helping others and well-being. We predicted that spending time helping others would be associated with lower hedonic well-being at the daily level but higher eudaimonic well-being at the monthly level. We further hypothesized that age would moderate these associations. Method: We used data from the main survey and the National Study of Daily Experiences (NSDE) in MIDUS 3 (N=865) and MIDUS Refresher 1 (N=612). Participants reported their daily and monthly time spent helping others. Measures included hedonic well-being (negative affect and positive affect) and eudaimonic well-being (social and psychological well-being). Results: At the daily level, our sample of adults experienced mixed emotional consequences on days when they spent more time helping others, reporting both higher negative and positive affect. Age moderation showed young and middle-aged adults experienced more negative affect. At the monthly level, spending time helping others was associated with higher social and psychological well-being. This association was significantly stronger among older adults than middle-aged adults in Refresher 1. Monthly spending time helping others was not associated with hedonic well-being. Discussion: These findings suggest that spending time helping others can be both taxing and enjoyable in the short term while contributing to eudaimonic benefits over the long term. Older age may reduce costs and enhance benefits of spending time helping others.

Objectives: Psychological richness, a dimension of well-being characterized by novelty, complexity, and perspective change, is theoretically grounded in varied and unusual experiences. This study examined whether daily activity diversity was associated with psychological richness in two cohorts of midlife and older adults from the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) study. Methods: Daily reports were drawn from two cohorts of the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) study: MIDUS 2 (M2; N = 1,834) and the MIDUS Refresher (MR; N = 730). Daily activity diversity was quantified with Shannon entropy, capturing both the breadth and evenness of participants' daily activities. Results: Lower activity diversity was associated with higher psychological richness in both cohorts (M2: β = −0.07, p <.001; MR: β = −0.06, p = .009). After adjustment for age, sex, education, race, and chronic health conditions, associations were inverse in both cohorts but statistically significant only in M2 (M2: β = −0.07, p <.001; MR: β = −0.04, p = .068). Discussion: These findings suggest that broader activity repertoires do not necessarily correspond to greater psychological richness and that psychologically rich lives may coexist with relatively narrow patterns of daily engagement.

Objectives: Sleep and cognitive functioning are linked. Yet, how sleep hours and sleep quality shape day-to-day subjective cognition, including cognitive interference and memory lapses, remains unclear. This study examined the unique and joint associations of sleep hours and quality with daily cognitive interference and memory lapses, investigating age-related variations. Methods: Participants were 915 adults (aged 43–83) from the Midlife in the United States Study who completed 8 days’ diaries. Multilevel models evaluated the unique and joint associations of sleep hours and sleep quality with cognitive interference and memory lapses focusing at the within-person level, beyond between-person associations. Age-stratified models explored potential differences across age groups. Results: Poorer sleep quality was associated with increased next-day cognitive interference, controlling for sleep hours. Individuals with poorer sleep quality across the study period also experienced greater cognitive interference and more frequent memory lapses. The association between poorer sleep quality and heightened cognitive interference was mitigated both on days when sleep hours were longer than usual and among individuals with longer sleep hours than others in the sample. Age-stratified analyses demonstrated that longer daily and habitual sleep hours mitigated the adverse effects of poorer sleep quality on cognitive interference only in adults aged 60–67. Discussion: Poor sleep hours and quality may impair daily cognition, yet extra sleep hours can mitigate the negative association of poor sleep quality on daily cognitive interference, especially among young-old adults. These findings highlight the nuanced interplay of sleep hours, sleep quality, and age in shaping daily cognition.