Within-Person Variation in Negative Urgency Predicts Near-Term Interpersonal Stress

High levels of negative urgency imply risk for impulsive and potentially self-destructive behavior. The social consequences of these impulsive states remain poorly understood. In the present study, we examined how state-like fluctuation in negative urgency provokes day-to-day interpersonal stressors using experience sampling methods. We recruited 119 adults with a history of recurrent self-injury to complete surveys of negative urgency and interpersonal stress (i.e., exposure to criticism and rejection) 4 times per day over 14 days. Results from hierarchical linear models showed that when people experienced more negative urgency, relative to their personal norms, they were more likely than usual to encounter interpersonal stress over the next few hours. There was some evidence to suggest that this within-person connection was more pronounced for people who tended to have higher negative urgency levels in general across the experience sampling period. We interpret these findings in the context of stress generation theory, and we conclude that within-person variation in negative urgency may represent a clinically useful model of near-term risk for interpersonal dysfunction.