Objective and Method Research on emotion and pain has burgeoned. We review the last decade’s literature, focusing on links between emotional processes and persistent pain. Results Neurobiological research documents the neural processes that distinguish affective from sensory pain dimensions, link emotion and pain, and generate central nervous system pain sensitization. Psychological research demonstrates that greater pain is related to emotional stress and limited emotional awareness, expression, and processing. Social research shows the potential importance of emotional communication, empathy, attachment, and rejection. Conclusions Emotions are integral to the conceptualization, assessment, and treatment of persistent pain. Research should clarify when to eliminate or attenuate negative emotions, and when to access, experience, and express them. Theory and practice should integrate emotion into cognitive-behavioral models of persistent pain.

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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...

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The objective of this study is to test the effects of police trauma resilience training on stress and performance during a critical incident police work simulation. Rookie police officers (N=18) participated in a randomized trial of a 10-week imagery and skills training program versus training as usual. Twelve months later, psychophysiological stress and police work performance were assessed during a live critical incident simulation. Training resulted in significantly less negative mood, less heart rate reactivity, a larger increase in antithrombin, and better police performance compared to controls. Trends for cortisol and self-reported stress also suggested benefits of training. This novel training program is a promising paradigm for improving police well-being, stress resiliency, and optimizing job performance.

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.

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This research reports age and gender differences in cardiac reactivity and subjective responses to the induction of autobiographical memories related to anger, fear, sadness, and happiness. Heart rate (HR) and subjective state were assessed at baseline and after the induction of each emotion in 113 individuals (61 men, 52 women; 66% European American, 34% African American) ranging in age from 15 to 88 years (M = 50.0; SD = 20.2). Cardiac reactivity was lower in older individuals; however, for anger and fear, these age effects were significantly more pronounced for the women than the men. There were no gender differences in subjective responses, however, suggesting that the lower cardiac reactivity found among older people is dependent on gender and the specific emotion assessed.