Helping older adults find meaning in their negative experiences appears to be a worthwhile research area to pursue. Questions for future research on positive reappraisal in older adulthood are proposed.

These findings indicate that positive reappraisal is related to positive emotion but not consistently with negative emotion, and continues to be beneficial over time in older adults who have experienced a stressor.

This study compared a single-session intervention of positive reappraisal to cognitive restructuring and supportive counselling to examine whether a brief positive reappraisal intervention could significantly increase positive reappraisal coping and positive emotion and lead to reductions in anxiety and depression. Inclusion criteria were: aged 60 years or older, diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, cognitively intact, and English language proficiency. 81 participants were randomly allocated to a condition and self-report measures of positive reappraisal, emotion, anxiety and depression were compared pre-intervention and at 1-week follow-up. The positive reappraisal intervention led to significantly increased positive reappraisal coping compared to the other two conditions, and significantly higher positive but not negative emotion compared to the control condition. No group differences in anxiety and depression were found. The results indicate that the single-session intervention may be effective for increasing older adults' positive reappraisal coping and specifically their positive emotion when compared to supportive counselling.

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Positive reappraisal is a meaning-based cognitive emotion regulation strategy of identifying positive meaning within negative experiences and is particularly relevant to older adults. There is currently no single accepted self-report measure. We conducted a systematic literature review of existing positive reappraisal self-report measures. Reliability and validity information were reported for all eight measures, with most internal consistency values exceeding .60. However, there were some concerns with factor structure and content validity. After careful review, the Cognitive Emotion Regulation Questionnaire, COPE Inventory and Illness Cognition Questionnaire appear to be the most useful and robust measures of positive reappraisal generally, and are also suitable for older adult samples. A more consistent use of measures in the literature will further positive reappraisal research.Positive reappraisal is a meaning-based cognitive emotion regulation strategy of identifying positive meaning in negative experiences. The construct originates from Lazarus and Folkman's (1984) transactional model of stress,