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Ceremonies of the whole

Does social participation moderate the mood consequences of neuroticism?

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Abstract

Background

The aim of this research was to test whether social participation is associated with improvements in mood and well-being, and in particular to test whether social participation might moderate the chronic distress associated with high levels of neuroticism (N).

Method

A rural Australian sample of 394 adults (54.3% female) completed questionnaires and participated in follow-up interviews. Social participation was indexed by community group membership, and operationalised for analysis in two forms: extent (number of group memberships) and presence (zero vs. one or more memberships). Mood was measured as Positive Affect (PA) and Negative Affect (NA) as rated on the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule and well-being was measured with Diener’s Satisfaction with Life (SWL) questionnaire. Items from Goldberg’s International Personality Item Pool were used to measure N.

Results

The extent of social participation was significantly associated with all three mood/well-being variables in bivariate analyses, and remained as a significant net predictor of PA and NA (β = 0.11, P < 0.05, β = −0.13, P < 0.05) when modeled with age, gender and income. In parallel, categorical social participation was found to be significantly associated with PA, NA and SWL in bivariate analyses and in multivariate analyses controlling for age, gender and income (β = 0.11, P < 0.05, β = −0.15, P < 0.01 and β = 0.11, P < 0.05, respectively). The interaction term N*Social interaction was significantly correlated with NA in bivariate analyses involving both continuous (r = −0.14, P < 0.01) and categorical (r = −0.13, P < 0.01) measures of social participation, and in its continuous form remained a significant net predictor of NA after controlling for the main effects of N and Social participation (β = −0.09, P < 0.05).

Conclusions

The present findings extend upon existing evidence that social participation tends to be positively associated with mental health by demonstrating the predicted effect across a comprehensive set of mood/well-being variables. Preliminary evidence was also obtained that social participation may serve as a moderator of the chronic distress associated with N. It is concluded that further research seeking to confirm the causal direction of the identified pathways is warranted.

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Notes

  1. A significant bivariate association between continuous social participation and SWL became a non-significant trend with the inclusion of age, gender and income in regression analyses, apparently due to the covariation between social participation and income in the context of a strong relationship between income and SWL.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Life and Social Sciences, Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, VIC, 3122, Australia

    Greg Murray

  2. Centre for Rural Mental Health, Bendigo Health Care Group, Bendigo, Australia

    Greg Murray, Fiona Judd, Henry Jackson, Caitlin Fraser, Angela Komiti, Pip Pattison, Alex Wearing & Garry Robins

  3. School of Psychology, Psychiatry and Psychological Medicine, Monash University, Clayton, Australia

    Fiona Judd & Angela Komiti

  4. Dept. of Psychology, University of Melbourne, Parkville, Australia

    Henry Jackson, Pip Pattison, Alex Wearing & Garry Robins

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  1. Greg Murray
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  2. Fiona Judd
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  3. Henry Jackson
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  4. Caitlin Fraser
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  5. Angela Komiti
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  6. Pip Pattison
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  7. Alex Wearing
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  8. Garry Robins
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Correspondence to Greg Murray.

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Murray, G., Judd, F., Jackson, H. et al. Ceremonies of the whole. Soc Psychiat Epidemiol 42, 173–180 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-006-0146-z

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