Bursts of self-conscious emotions in the daily lives of emerging adults

Self-conscious emotions play a role in regulating daily achievement strivings, social behavior, and health, but little is known about the processes underlying their daily manifestation. Emerging adults (n = 182) completed daily diaries for 8 days and multilevel models were estimated to evaluate whether, how much, and why their emotions varied from day to day. Within-person variation in authentic pride was normally distributed across people and days, whereas the other emotions were burst-like and characterized by zero-inflated, negative binomial distributions. Perceiving social interactions as generally communal increased the odds of hubristic pride activation and reduced the odds of guilt activation; daily communal behavior reduced guilt intensity. Results illuminated processes through which meaning about the self in relation to others is constructed during a critical period of development.