Affective Inertia Varies with Momentary Social Context: Evidence From Two Experience-Sampling Studies
Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: Affective inertia refers to the degree to which affect carries over from one moment to the next and is typically modeled as a fixed, person-specific parameter. However, emerging evidence suggests that it may vary across time and context. Social context is a likely source of such variation, as people often rely on others to regulate their emotions, but whether inertia varies with everyday social context has rarely been tested. We examined whether momentary social context moderates affective valence inertia in two experience-sampling studies. Study 1 included 315 adolescents and young adults from a Brazilian high-risk cohort (2020–2021), and Study 2 included 803 adults from Austria, Germany, and Italy (2020). Social context was measured as being with others at each prompt in Study 1 and as social interaction since the previous prompt in Study 2. In both studies, Bayesian multilevel autoregressive models showed that social context was associated with more positive momentary valence and weaker overall valence inertia. Piecewise models further estimate positive and negative valence inertia separately, showing that social context was associated with weaker negative valence inertia in both studies, whereas its moderation of positive valence inertia was not credible in either study. Although the difference between these two moderation effects was only credible in Study 2, both studies linked social context to a weaker negative affect inertia. Overall, our results suggest a context-sensitive view of affective inertia and suggest that treating inertia as a fixed parameter may overlook meaningful within-person variation.
Source: PsyArXiv (OSF Preprints)
Language: English
Subfield: Experimental and Cognitive Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7223028250