Do Interpersonal Events Interact with Optimism or Pessimism to Affect Symptoms?
Hierarchical multiple regression was also used to examine whether interpersonal events interacted with optimism or pessimism to affect total, URI and non-URI symptoms. The deviation score product terms of interpersonal hassles and optimism, as well as interpersonal uplifts and optimism, were entered after their main effects (Finney, Mitchell, Cronkite & Moos, 1984). Contrary to expectations, optimism did not interact with events to affect any symptom measure. The R2-change values of these interaction terms ranged from .007 to .016, all non significant. A similar set of analyses were carried out for pessimism, and this variable did not interact with interpersonal events to affect URI or non-URI symptoms, although the joint effects of pessimism and interpersonal events did affect total symptoms, as shown in Table 4. Sub-group analyses revealed that interpersonal hassles are more strongly related to symptoms among people low in pessimism. [95] ————— [96] Table 4: R2-Change Value
