Emotional experience and regulation across the adult lifespan: comparative analysis in three age groups

The studies focused on age-related differences in emotional experience are still scarce, and most of them have been conducted with North-American samples. This study explores the presence of age-related differences in some facets of emotional experience (subjective well-being and emotional intensity), as well as in variables related to emotion regulation (subjective emotional control and three emotion-regulation mechanisms: situation selection, emotion suppression, rumination) in the Spanish population. One hundred and sixty people from three age groups (younger, middle-aged and older adults) participated in the study. Older participants reported lower levels of life satisfaction and positive emotional intensity than younger ones, as well as higher levels of perceived emotional control, emotional maturity and leveling of positive affect, and more use of emotion suppression. The results partially support the emotional maturity hypothesis of emotional functioning in old age, but also suggest that older adults' emotional regulation may present important peculiarities which have not yet been addressed in the extant literature, such as the moderation or limitation of emotional experience, especially positive emotions.     

Age Differences in Affective Well-Being: Context Matters

The study of emotion across the adult lifespan requires an understanding of how life circumstances change with age. With this knowledge, we can predict when age is related to increases in affective well-being and when age no longer confers such benefits. In the current paper, we review research that finds age-related stability and even increases in affective well-being, as well as age-related strengths in several emotion regulation strategies. We introduce the theory of Strength and Vulnerability Integration to predict age-related patterns in emotional experience across the adult lifespan, and to identify situations when age will no longer be related to improved emotion-related outcomes. We suggest that only by understanding the context of daily life can we predict when and how age is related to affective well-being.     

Age similarities in matching pro- and contra-hedonic emotional strategies to everyday scenarios

ABSTRACT

Older adults are motivated to maximize positive affect in the present. Young adults will purposely feel negative and high arousal emotions in order to achieve a goal. However, this type of contra-hedonic emotional alignment has not been extensively studied with older adults. We expected older adults are less likely than young adults to select high arousal and negative emotions within specific scenarios where those states could be useful. In two studies, participants selected the emotion they preferred in hypothetical problems that varied on the arousal and valence best suited for goal achievement. Young and older adults were equally likely to endorse affective strategies that matched both pro and contra-hedonic scenarios. While older adults may be generally motivated to avoid negative and high-arousing emotions, they are just as likely as young adults to indicate that these states could be helpful in certain situations.     

The effects of emotion on younger and older adults’ monitoring of learning

Age-related differences in memory monitoring appear when people learn emotional words. Namely, younger adults’ judgments of learning (JOLs) are higher for positive than neutral words, whereas older adults’ JOLs do not discriminate between positive versus neutral words. In two experiments, we evaluated whether this age-related difference extends to learning positive versus neutral pictures. We also evaluated the contribution of two dimensions of emotion that may impact younger and older adults’ JOLs: valence and arousal. Younger and older adults studied pictures that were positive or neutral and either high or low in arousal. Participants made immediate JOLs and completed memory tests. In both experiments, the magnitude of older adults’ JOLs was influenced by emotion, and both younger and older adults demonstrated an emotional salience effect on JOLs. As important, the magnitude of participants’ JOLs was influenced by valence, and not arousal. Emotional salience effects were also evident on participants’ free recall, and older adults recalled as many pictures as did younger adults. Taken together, these data suggest that older adults do not have a monitoring deficit when learning positive (vs. neutral) pictures and that emotional salience effects on younger and older adults’ JOLs are produced more by valence than by arousal.     

Me against myself: motivational conflicts and emotional development in adulthood

Two studies investigated adult age differences in the frequency and emotional consequences of motivational conflicts (i.e., feeling that one wants to or should do something else in a given situation). Study 1 compared younger and older adults. Study 2 included a more age-heterogeneous sample ranging from 20 to 70 years. Data were obtained using diary and experience-sampling methods. Multilevel regression showed that motivational conflict was associated with lower emotional well-being. With age, the frequency of motivational conflict decreased, while emotional well-being increased. Importantly, the age-related decrease in motivational conflicts partly accounted for the age-related increase in emotional well-being. Findings were consistent across studies and robust after the authors controlled for age differences in a number of control variables including time use. The authors conclude that an age-related decrease in motivational conflicts in daily life may be among the factors underlying the positive development of emotional well-being into older adulthood.     

The effect of ageing on the recollection of emotional and neutral pictures

This study investigated age-related differences in recognition memory for emotional and neutral pictures. Younger and older participants were asked to rate pictures according to their emotional valence, arousal, and visual complexity. Two weeks later they had to recognise these pictures and the states of awareness associated with memory were assessed with the "remember/know/guess" paradigm. We found that, although the influence of emotion on recognition accuracy (as assessed by d') was similar in both age groups, the tendency for positive and negative pictures to create a rich recollective experience was weaker in older adults. In addition, "remember" responses were more often based on a recollection of emotional reactions in older than in younger participants. We suggest that the elderly tend to focus on their feelings when confronted with emotional pictures, which could have impaired their memory for the contextual information associated with these stimuli.     

The effect of ageing on the recollection of emotional and neutral pictures

This study investigated age-related differences in recognition memory for emotional and neutral pictures. Younger and older participants were asked to rate pictures according to their emotional valence, arousal, and visual complexity. Two weeks later they had to recognise these pictures and the states of awareness associated with memory were assessed with the “remember/know/guess” paradigm. We found that, although the influence of emotion on recognition accuracy (as assessed by d′) was similar in both age groups, the tendency for positive and negative pictures to create a rich recollective experience was weaker in older adults. In addition, “remember” responses were more often based on a recollection of emotional reactions in older than in younger participants. We suggest that the elderly tend to focus on their feelings when confronted with emotional pictures, which could have impaired their memory for the contextual information associated with these stimuli.     

Performance in auditory and visual emotional stroop tasks: a comparison of older and younger adults

Research has shown age-related declines in the cognitive ability to inhibit irrelevant information. Thirty-six younger adults (mean age = 22 years) and 36 older adults (mean age = 74 years) performed 2 versions of an emotional Stroop task. In one, they made lexical decisions to emotion words spoken in 1 of several tones of voice. Latencies were longer for test words spoken in an incongruent tone of voice, but only for older adults. In another, words were displayed on a computer screen in a colored font, and participants quickly named the font color. Latencies were longer for test words high on arousal, but only for older adults. Results are discussed in terms of inhibitory cognitive processes, attention, and theories of emotional development.     

Affect dynamics, affective forecasting, and aging

Affective forecasting, experienced affect, and recalled affect were compared in younger and older adults during a task in which participants worked to win and avoid losing small monetary sums. Dynamic changes in affect were measured along valence and arousal dimensions, with probes during both anticipatory and consummatory task phases. Older and younger adults displayed distinct patterns of affect dynamics. Younger adults reported increased negative arousal during loss anticipation and positive arousal during gain anticipation. In contrast, older adults reported increased positive arousal during gain anticipation but showed no increase in negative arousal on trials involving loss anticipation. Additionally, younger adults reported large increases in valence after avoiding an anticipated loss, but older adults did not. Younger, but not older, adults exhibited forecasting errors on the arousal dimension, underestimating increases in arousal during anticipation of gains and losses and overestimating increases in arousal in response to gain outcomes. Overall, the findings are consistent with a growing literature suggesting that older people experience less negative emotion than their younger counterparts and further suggest that they may better predict dynamic changes in affect.     

Age-Related Differences in Lay Conceptions of Well-Being and Experienced Well-Being

Conceptions of well-being are defined as a system of beliefs concerning the nature and experience of well-being and can be described generally by the degree to which four dimensions, representing (1) the experience of pleasure, (2) avoidance of negative experience, (3) selfdevelopment, and (4) contribution to others, are emphasized. A first main objective of the current study was to investigate age-related differences in younger and older adults’ conceptions of well-being. A second main objective was to address whether conceptions of well-being are differentially associated with experienced well-being in younger and older adults. Results indicated several age-related differences in conceptions of well-being, with younger adults reporting more emphasis on the experience of pleasure and self-development, older adults reporting more emphasis on avoidance of negative experience, and younger and older adults reporting similar levels of emphasis on contribution to others. Results further indicated several age-related differences in associations between the experience of pleasure and avoidance of negative experience dimensions and well-being, with these two dimensions being more strongly and positively associated with well-being in older adults. Self-development and contribution to others were found to be positively associated with well-being regardless of age.     

Age-related differences in medial prefrontal activation in response to emotional images

Research has suggested that aging results in a "positivity effect," with young adults dwelling on negative information, and older adults attending to positive information. In order to understand age-related changes in emotional processing underlying this effect, the present fMRI study compared neural activity in young and older adults as they viewed positive, negative, and neutral images. Results indicated a striking age-related reversal in the valence of information eliciting activity within the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC). Negative in comparison with positive images activated the VMPFC more for young adults, whereas positive in comparison with negative images activated the VMPFC more for the older adults. The VMPFC is a region associated with the processing of emotional information, and more specifically, with emotion generation and emotion regulation. Therefore, the present results suggest that age-related changes in these processes implemented by the VMPFC contribute to older adults' "positivity effect."     

Behavioral inhibition and amplification during emotional arousal: a comparison of two age groups

This study investigated age differences in the ability to suppress and amplify expressive behavior during emotional arousal. Young and old participants viewed 3 film clips about medical procedures while their behavioral, autonomic, and subjective responses were recorded. Half of the participants viewed all 3 films without additional instructions; the other half was asked to suppress and amplify their behavioral expression during the 2nd and 3rd films. Except for heart rate, suppression and amplification produced similar patterns of autonomic activation. Neither suppression nor amplification had effects on self-reported emotion. There were no age differences in the ability to suppress or amplify emotional expression or in their physiological or subjective consequences. Considering that older people's unregulated reactivity was lower than that of young adults, suppression may have been easier and amplification more difficult for older adults. Voluntary emotion regulation might be one domain of human performance that is spared from age-related losses.     

Cognitive emotion regulation in adulthood and old age: positive gaze preferences across two strategies

While positive emotional functioning may be enhanced across adulthood and old age, research is mixed as to the types of regulatory strategies that are more or less beneficial for facilitating well-being. The goal of the present study was to examine how specific cognitive emotion regulation strategies assumed to rely on varying levels of effortful processing (selective attention vs. reappraisal) would impact regulatory behaviors (via eye gaze deployment) and resultant affective outcomes. Participants viewed a series of positive, negative, and neutral film clips while their eyes were tracked across three conditions: passive viewing, selective attention, and reappraisal. Results revealed that (a) both younger and older adults displayed positive fixation preferences and showed mood improvement across both regulatory conditions and (b) there was a marginal association between positive fixation and post-regulation mood. Implications for linking positivity to emotion regulation and well-being across adulthood are discussed.     

Emotion experience and expression across the adult life span: insights from a multimodal assessment study

This investigation represents a multimodal study of age-related differences in experienced and expressed affect and in emotion regulatory skills in a sample of young, middle-aged, and older adults (N=96), testing formulations derived from differential emotions theory. The experimental session consisted of a 10-min anger induction and a 10-min sadness induction using a relived emotion task; participants were also randomly assigned to an inhibition or noninhibition condition. In addition to subjective ratings of emotional experience provided by participants, their facial behavior was coded using an objective facial affect coding system; a content analysis also was applied to the emotion narratives. Separate repeated measures analyses of variance applied to each emotion domain indicated age differences in the co-occurrence of negative emotions and co-occurrence of positive and negative emotions across domains, thus extending the finding of emotion heterogeneity or complexity in emotion experience to facial behavior and verbal narratives. The authors also found that the inhibition condition resulted in a different pattern of results in the older versus middle-aged and younger adults. The intensity and frequency of discrete emotions were similar across age groups, with a few exceptions. Overall, the findings were generally consistent with differential emotions theory.     

Sleep facilitates consolidation of positive emotional memory in healthy older adults

ABSTRACT

Evidence has demonstrated that sleep-related memory consolidation declines in ageing. However, little is known about age-related changes to sleep-related emotional memory consolidation, especially when considering the positivity effect observed in older adults. In the present study, we sought to explore whether there is a positive emotional bias in sleep-related memory consolidation among healthy older adults. Young and older adults were randomly assigned either into a sleep or wake condition. All participants encoded positive, negative, and neutral stimuli and underwent recognition tests immediately (test 1), after a 12-hour sleep/wake interval (test 2), and 3 days after test 2 (test 3). Results showed that age-related differences of sleep beneficial effect were modulated by emotion valence. In particular, sleep selectively enhanced positive memory in older adults, while in young adults sleep beneficial effect was manifested in neutral memory. Moreover, the sleep beneficial effect can be maintained at least 3 days in both young and older adults. These findings suggest that older adults had preserved but positive bias of sleep-related memory consolidation, which could be one of the underlying mechanisms for their generally better emotional well-being in daily life. These findings highlight the dynamic interplay among sleep and emotional memory in older adults.     

Effects of age on cross-modal emotion perception

Efficient navigation of our social world depends on the generation, interpretation, and combination of social signals within different sensory systems. However, the influence of healthy adult aging on multisensory integration of emotional stimuli remains poorly explored. This article comprises 2 studies that directly address issues of age differences on cross-modal emotional matching and explicit identification. The first study compared 25 younger adults (19-40 years) and 25 older adults (60-80 years) on their ability to match cross-modal congruent and incongruent emotional stimuli. The second study looked at performance of 20 younger (19-40) and 20 older adults (60-80) on explicit emotion identification when information was presented congruently in faces and voices or only in faces or in voices. In Study 1, older adults performed as well as younger adults on tasks in which congruent auditory and visual emotional information were presented concurrently, but there were age-related differences in matching incongruent cross-modal information. Results from Study 2 indicated that though older adults were impaired at identifying emotions from 1 modality (faces or voices alone), they benefited from congruent multisensory information as age differences were eliminated. The findings are discussed in relation to social, emotional, and cognitive changes with age.     

Age differences in the organization of emotion knowledge: effects involving valence and time frame

Older and younger adults attend to and remember emotion information differently. The present study builds on this work by investigating age-related differences in the schematic organization of emotion knowledge. Younger and older adults reported on their experiences of positive and negative affect, both today and in general. Of primary interest was judgment speed as a function of matches (e.g., positive-positive) or mismatches (e.g., negative-positive) in valence and time frame across consecutive trials. Older adults exhibited stronger valence-related priming effects and weaker time-frame-related priming effects, relative to younger adults. Results remained significant when controlling for individual differences in speed, speed variability, motor priming, temperament, and life satisfaction. The discussion focuses on the manner in which age differences in the schematic organization of emotion knowledge might contribute to age differences in the self-concept, affective processing, and emotional experience.     

Anger management: age differences in emotional modulation of visual processing

Although positive and negative images enhance the visual processing of young adults, recent work suggests that a life-span shift in emotion processing goals may lead older adults to avoid negative images. To examine this tendency for older adults to regulate their intake of negative emotional information, the current study investigated age-related differences in the perceptual boost received by probes appearing over facial expressions of emotion. Visually-evoked event-related potentials were recorded from the scalp over cortical regions associated with visual processing as a probe appeared over facial expressions depicting anger, sadness, happiness, or no emotion. The activity of the visual system in response to each probe was operationalized in terms of the P1 component of the event-related potentials evoked by the probe. For young adults, the visual system was more active (i.e., greater P1 amplitude) when the probes appeared over any of the emotional facial expressions. However, for older adults, the visual system displayed reduced activity when the probe appeared over angry facial expressions.     

Greater emotional empathy and prosocial behavior in late life

Emotional empathy and prosocial behavior were assessed in older, middle-aged, and young adults. Participants watched two films depicting individuals in need, one uplifting and the other distressing. Physiological responses were monitored during the films, and participants rated their levels of emotional empathy following each film. As a measure of prosocial behavior, participants were given an additional payment they could contribute to charities supporting the individuals in the films. Age-related linear increases were found for both emotional empathy (self-reported empathic concern and cardiac and electrodermal responding) and prosocial behavior (size of contribution) across both films and in self-reported personal distress to the distressing film. Empathic concern and cardiac reactivity to both films, along with personal distress to the distressing film only, were associated with greater prosocial behavior. Empathic concern partially mediated the age-related differences in prosocial behavior. Results are discussed in terms of our understanding both of adult development and of the nature of these vital aspects of human emotion. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved).     

Emotional organization of autobiographical memory

The emotional organization of autobiographical memory was examined by determining whether emotional cues would influence autobiographical retrieval in younger and older adults. Unfamiliar musical cues that represented orthogonal combinations of positive and negative valence and high and low arousal were used. Whereas cue valence influenced the valence of the retrieved memories, cue arousal did not affect arousal ratings. However, high-arousal cues were associated with reduced response latencies. A significant bias to report positive memories was observed, especially for the older adults, but neither the distribution of memories across the life span nor response latencies varied across memories differing in valence or arousal. These data indicate that emotional information can serve as effective cues for autobiographical memories and that autobiographical memories are organized in terms of emotional valence but not emotional arousal. Thus, current theories of autobiographical memory must be expanded to include emotional valence as a primary dimension of organization.