Understanding age differences in emotional experience

University Of California Irvine, Irvine CA

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Abstract

Emotion regulation is vital for human functioning. Because emotions are frequently experienced in a social context emotion regulation is necessary for successful social relationships, which in turn influence health status and even mortality. Studies examining age differences suggest that emotion regulation improves across the adult life span, yet few studies have explored the mechanisms behind these age-related changes. The proposed study will examine two potential mediators- life experience and cognitive appraisal style- for the relationship between age and emotional experience. Specifically, these two factors are hypothesized to influence the degree to which emotions are experienced (sadness versus anger) in response to negative stimuli. Younger and older participants (N=180) will view film clips designed with the potential to elicit different negative emotions (i.e., sadness and anger). Participants will complete questionnaires about the emotions experienced and their cognitive appraisals about each film clip. It is hypothesized that: 1) When viewing negative emotion-eliciting film clips, older adults will report less anger and more sadness compared to the reports of younger adults; 2) Cognitive appraisals (i.e., greater situational attributions and viewing thee scenario from multiple perspectives) will be related to lower levels of anger; 3) People who have experienced greater numbers of life will report a greater mix of emotions, and they will also report sadness to a greater extent than anger in response to the film clips. This study will provide information about age-related psychological strategies that potentially could be taught to younger adults (i.e.,cognitive appraisals) to and in the future to examine the effects of these strategies on physiological responses to emotional stimuli to aid in understanding the relationship between physical and emotional functioning, and how this relationship may change with age.