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Abstract
Forty-one breast cancer patients completed an Internet-based diary measuring daily negative and positive affect and daily negative and positive events for seven consecutive evenings shortly after surgery. The authors used Hierarchical Linear Modeling (Raudenbush & Bryk, 2002) to examine moderators of affective differentiation, or the daily relationship between negative and positive affect, in the breast cancer patients. There were no significant Level 1 (within-subject) moderators of affective differentiation. However, at Level 2 (between-subject), increased age was associated with stronger affective differentiation, as was greater use of active coping, planning, seeking medical advice, and acceptance to cope with breast cancer. Greater use of behavioral disengagement coping was associated with weaker affective differentiation. More generally, our project represents only the second study to examine the daily emotional experiences of breast cancer patients and the first to apply the construct of affective differentiation to a cancer population.
