Understanding the Experience of Daily Events: A Dimensional Taxonomy of the Perceived Characteristics of Daily Events

Daily events like a relationship conflict, a work-related success, or a pleasant meeting with a friend can significantly influence people’s well-being and mental health. To fully understand their psychological effects, different theories stress that people’s subjective perception of daily events must be considered. However, a systematic examination of the perceived characteristics of daily events is still missing, which has led to jingle-jangle problems and the negligence of their perceived characteristics in existing research. To overcome these problems, we conducted a systematic literature review and four empirical studies (Ntotal = 1,468) to develop a taxonomy that systematically captures the perception of daily events on eight dimensions: positive emotion, challenge, relevance, threat to self, predictability, duty, sociality, and external control. Furthermore, we validated a measure – the Daily Event Questionnaire – to reliably and validly assess these perceived characteristics of daily events. Applying our taxonomy and measure, we found that the perception of daily events systematically differed from the perception of everyday situations. Moreover, the perception of daily events predicted fluctuations in daily and weekly well-being over time. We discuss how this dimensional taxonomy of perceived event characteristics may advance future research and theory development regarding the effects of daily events on well-being and discuss similarities and differences between our taxonomy and taxonomies of the perception of situations and major life events.