Psychological well-being and day-to-day social interaction among older adults

A sample of 113 healthy older adults used a variant of the Rochester Interaction Record to describe the social interactions they had each day for two weeks. They also completed various measures of psychological well-being including life satisfaction and loneliness. A series of multilevel random coefficient analyses found that life satisfaction scores were positively related to how enjoyable interactions were, how self-assured people felt when interacting, how much control they felt they had over interactions, how responsive others were to their needs, and how socially active they were. Analyses that took participants' marital status into account suggested, however, that interaction outcomes and life satisfaction were related only for married participants, and that these relationships were primarily due to interaction outcomes with spouses.