The Dynamics of Coping, Positive Emotions, and Well-Being: Evidence From Latin American Immigrant Farmworkers and College Students During a Time of Political Strife

In the present article, we use daily diary methodology to investigate how coping influences well-being via the engagement of positive emotions in immigrant farmworkers and university students from diverse ethnic backgrounds. In Study 1, in a sample of Latinx immigrant farmworkers (N = 76), we found that the daily use of adaptive coping strategies predicted greater daily well-being, and that this relationship was accounted for by greater daily experiences of positive emotions. In Study 2, in a sample of college students from Latinx, Asian, and European American backgrounds (N = 336), we replicated the mediating effect of positive emotionality on the effect of adaptive coping on daily well-being and extended these findings to an examination of longitudinal well-being. This work provides evidence of one mechanism by which coping affects well-being and is one of the first studies of these dynamics in Latinx samples.