Past studies have suggested that the intensity of subjective reactions to emotion-arousing stimuli remains stable, whereas the magnitude of autonomic reactions declines with age. The goal of the present studies was to investigate whether this evidence will generalize to newly edited films dealing with age-relevant themes such as the loss of loved ones. In Study 1, greater self-reported sadness was found in older than in younger adults in response to all films. Findings of Study 2, which were based on an independent sample, replicated those of Study 1. In addition, 6 indicators of autonomic nervous system activity were assessed. Young and old adults did not differ in their autonomic reactions to the films. This evidence suggests that when older people are exposed to stimuli featuring themes that are relevant to their age group, they show greater subjective and physiological reactions than would be expected on the basis of past research.

No abstract

We discuss the inverse-U-shaped age pattern, in terms of aging versus cohort influences, and how it complements and extends the existing literature on empathy and age.

This study examined change in self-reported empathy in a four-wave longitudinal study spanning 12 years (1992)(1993)(1994)(1995)(1996)(1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004) and the association between empathy and other measures, including daily reports of relationship experiences. Participants initially ranged in age from 10 years to 87 years. Crosssectional and longitudinal associations of age with empathy revealed divergent patterns. Whereas cross-sectional analyses suggested that older adults scored lower in empathy than younger adults, longitudinal analyses showed no age-related decline in empathy. This combined pattern suggests that the cross-sectional age-differences reflect a cohort rather than an age effect, with older cohorts reporting lower levels of empathy than younger ones. Independent of age, empathy was associated with a positive well-being (e.g., life satisfaction) and interaction profile (e.g., positive relations with others). In addition, a subsample of participants (n= 114) conducted experience-sampling about social interactions for a week. People with high self-reported empathy perceived their interactions as more meaningful, felt more positive in these interactions, and thought that their interaction partner felt also more positive. Thus, self-reported empathy was meaningfully associated with adults' actual social interactions. Keywordsempathy; age differences; cohort effect; experience sampling Empathy, the ability to understand another person's thoughts and feelings, involves emotional and cognitive processes and is a fundamental aspect of social interactions and relationships (Davis, 1994;Ickes, 1997;Singer, 2006). Moreover, empathic understanding is also an integral part of moral development and an important motivational component of prosocial and altruistic behavior (Eisenberg, 2000;Hoffman, 1977Hoffman, , 2000. Although empathy is relevant for social interactions across the entire lifespan, the development of empathy has been studied mainly in Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Daniel Grühn, North Carolina State University, Department of Psychology, 640 Poe Hall, Campus Box 7650, Raleigh, NC 27695. E-mail: E-mail: dgruehn@ncsu.edu. Daniel Grühn is now at the Department of Psychology, North Carolina State University. NIH Public Access Author ManuscriptEmotion. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2009 April 17. NIH-PA Author ManuscriptNIH-PA Author Manuscript NIH-PA Author Manuscript childhood and adolescence rather than adulthood and old age (e.g., Eisenberg & Fabes, 1990;Hoffman, 2000;Zahn-Waxler, Radke-Yarrow, Wagner, & Chapman, 1992). Overall, this research has shown that precursors of empathy-related abilities appear quite early in life in the form of simple emotional contagion (e.g., Hoffman, 1977Hoffman, , 2000Singer, 2006) and develop in more complex forms in childhood and adolescence in tandem with major progressions in cognitive and emotional development (e.g., Eisenberg, 2000). Some lifespan researchers (Erikson, 1968;Vaillant, 197...

Emotional complexity has been regarded as one correlate of adaptive emotion regulation in adulthood. One novel and potentially valuable approach to operationalizing emotional complexity is to use reports of emotions obtained repeatedly in real time, which can generate a number of potential time-based indicators of emotional complexity. It is not known, however, how these indicators relate to each other, to other measures of affective complexity, such as those derived from a cognitive-developmental view of emotional complexity, or to measures of adaptive functioning, such as well-being. A sample of 109 adults, aged 23 to 90 years, participated in an experience-sampling study and reported their negative and positive affect five times a day for one week. Based on these reports, we calculated nine different time-based indicators potentially reflecting emotional complexity. Analyses showed three major findings: First, the indicators showed a diverse pattern of interrelations suggestive of four distinct components of emotional complexity. Second, age was generally not related to time-based indicators of emotional complexity; however, older adults showed overall low variability in negative affect. Third, time-based indicators of emotional complexity were either unrelated or inversely related to measures of adaptive functioning; that is, these measures tended to predict a less adaptive profile, such as lower subjective and psychological well-being. In sum, time-based indicators of emotional complexity displayed a more complex and less beneficial picture than originally thought. In particular, variability in negative affect seems to indicate suboptimal adjustments. Future research would benefit from collecting empirical data for the interrelations and correlates of time-based indicators of emotional complexity in different contexts.

Some authors argue for a memory advantage of older adults for positively toned material. To investigate the contribution of selective processing to a positivity effect, the authors investigated young (n = 72, aged 18 to 31) and older (n = 72, aged 64 to 75) adults' memory for emotionally toned words using a multitrial paradigm that compares performance for heterogeneous (mixed valence) and homogeneous (single valence) lists. Regarding the age comparison, there was no evidence for an aging bias favoring positive material. Moreover, older adults' memory was less affected by emotion-based processing prioritization. Although there was no support for age-specific processing biases in memory for emotionally toned words, the findings are consistent with proposals that negative information receives processing priority in some contexts. Possible limits to the generalizability of the present findings (e.g., to nonverbal material) are discussed.

The goal of this study was to validate a French version of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI), a self-report questionnaire comprised of four subscales assessing affective (empathic concern and personal distress) and cognitive (fantasy and perspective taking) components of empathy. To accomplish this, 322 adults (18 to 89 years) completed the French version of the IRI (F-IRI). A confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the four-factor structure of the original IRI. The F-IRI showed good scale score reliability, test-retest reliability, and convergent validity, tested with the French version of the Empathy Quotient. These findings confirmed the reliability and validity of the F-IRI and suggest that the F-IRI is a useful instrument to measure self-reported empathy. In addition, we observed sex and age differences consistent with findings in the literature. Women reported higher scores in empathic concern and fantasy than men. Older adults reported less personal distress and less fantasy.

No abstract