Momentary social interactions and affect in later life varied across the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted many different facets of life. The infectious nature of the disease has led to significant changes in social interactions in everyday life. The present study examined how older adults' patterns of everyday momentary social interactions (i.e., with no one, partner, family, and friends) and their affect varied across the early stages of the pandemic and whether the magnitude of affective benefits associated with social interactions changed across time. A total of 188 adults aged 50 or above (Mage = 62.05) completed momentary assessments in early March, late March, May, and July 2020. Overall, older adults spent more time in solitude and less time interacting with their friends after the declaration of the pandemic. Further, negative affect (NA) spiked after the pandemic declaration and then returned to pre-pandemic level. Finally, momentary interactions with close social ties were consistently associated with higher positive affect (PA) and lower NA whereas momentary solitude was associated with lower PA, but not related to NA. The magnitude of associations between specific social interactions (or solitude) and affect varied across time, and the onset of the pandemic appeared associated with this variation. During the presumably most stressful period, solitude was not associated with lower PA and family interaction was not associated with higher PA as they were at other times. Further, interactions with friends seemed to have diminished affective benefits following the onset of the pandemic.

Fig 1. The predicted probabilities of various momentary social interactions across waves.

Note. For models with a significant overall effect of wave, different letters indicate that the predicted probabilities in those waves were significantly different from each other.

Fig 2. The predicted means of momentary PA and NA across waves.

Note. For models with a significant overall effect of wave, different letters indicate that the predicted means in those waves were significantly different from each other.

Fig 3. PA and NA predicted by momentary social interactions across waves.

Note. For models with a significant “momentary social interaction × wave” interaction, * indicates that the difference in affect between with and without social interaction was significant at a specific wave and different letters indicate that the differences in affect between with and without social interaction in those waves were significantly different from each other.