Fig. 4: The moderated moderating analysis results.
From: The interplay of acute cortisol response and trait affectivity in associating with stress resilience
a,b, The trait positive affect (a) and positive reappraisal (b) moderated the moderating effect of anticipatory cortisol response on the relationship between life stress and SCL-90. This moderated moderating analysis was conducted using the PROCESS macro implemented in SPSS (pre-set Model No. 3). The test was two-sided. We conducted a Holm–Bonferroni correction procedure to adjust for the two types of positive emotion regulation strategy analysed. In a, the moderating effect of cortisol is seen to be further moderated by positive affect (F1, 135 = 3.97, bootstrapped CI = 0.0204 to 2.0364, P = 0.05). The negative moderating effect of cortisol was only observed at a low level of positive affect (F1, 47 = 7.57, bootstrapped CI = −21.5529 to −5.0381, P = 0.005), but not at an intermediate or high level of positive affect (bootstrapped P > 0.35). In b, the moderating effect of cortisol was also moderated by positive reappraisal (F1, 135 = 5.28, bootstrapped CI = 0.5133 to 8.0221, P = 0.04). The negative moderating effect of cortisol was observed at a low level (F1, 38 = 5.50, bootstrapped CI = −21.5859 to −1.3569, P = 0.04) and intermediate level (F1, 55 = 4.85, bootstrapped CI = −19.7838 to −0.3268, P = 0.04) of positive reappraisal, but not at a high level (bootstrapped P = 0.45). ***P < 0.001; **P < 0.01; *P < 0.05.
