Coping with Daily Stress: Differential Role of Spiritual Experience on Daily Positive and Negative Affect

Feelings of stress are an unfortunate reality of life and can be the result of once-in-a-lifetime events such as the death of a spouse or the everyday hassles of life such as car trouble or an argument with a loved one. According to stress-and-coping theory, the extent to which this stress has a negative impact on well-being is largely a factor of the utilization and efficacy of the coping resources at an individual’s disposal (Aldwin, 2009; Lazarus & Folkman, 1984). The substantial cultural presence of religion and spirituality, along with its particular significance to older adults (Koenig, 1994; Pew Research Center, 2009), makes faith a potentially powerful coping resource in the lives of aging Americans. Some have suggested that the coping function of religion and spirituality increases in salience with age due to the increasing awareness of one’s own mortality, which prompts older individuals to place a greater emphasis on existential aspects of life than they may have when they were younger (Fiori, Brown, Cortina, & Antonucci, 2006; Koenig, 1994). One dimension of spiritual coping that is especially relevant to daily stress is that of everyday spiritual experience (ESE), which applies to a broader demographic than some other religious or spiritual domains by referring to aspects of spirituality that are not necessarily tied to religion; these include feeling the presence of God, feeling touched by the beauty of creation, or having a sense of inner peace and harmony (Underwood & Teresi, 2002). Globally, experiences like these serve to enhance dimensions of both physical and psychological well-being, particularly in older adults (Ellison & Fan, 2008; McCauley, Tarpley, Haaz, & Bartlett, 2008; Pargament, 1997); they also appear to tap the presence of daily spiritual coping (Jackson & Bergeman, 2011; Keefe et al., 2001). Few studies have examined the coping function of ESE on the daily level: one study found beneficial associations of daily spiritual experience with daily arthritis pain and affect but did not explicitly test the moderating effect (Keefe et al., 2001) and another examined spiritual coping as a daily mediator of stress attribution and affect in adolescents but used only a single item to assess spiritual coping (Roesch, Vaughn, Aldridge, & Villodas, 2009). The present study adds to this daily ESE literature by (a) investigating the coping function of ESE in the context of psychological stress, (b) explicitly testing the moderating function of ESE, and (c) using a full scale to assess daily ESE. The specific question of interest here is whether ESE buffers against the negative effects of a given day’s level of perceived stress (PS) on that day’s mood (positive and negative affect; PA/NA) in older adults. Hypotheses were that on days when individuals experience PS above their own average, they will also report higher NA and lower PA on that day (main effect for PS); that on days when individuals report spiritual experience above their own average, they will also have lower NA and higher PA (main effect for spiritual experience); and that the presence of daily spiritual experience will buffer—or moderate—the negative impact of a given day’s stress on that day’s affect (interaction effect).