Prior research on age and emotions has found that older adults may show better physiological regulation to stressful stimuli than do younger adults. However, the stress reactivity literature has shown that age is associated with higher cardiovascular reactivity to laboratory stress (J. R. Jennings et al., 1997). The authors investigated these conflicting findings further by examining daily ambulatory blood pressure in 428 middle-aged to older adults. Consistent with the age and reactivity literature, relatively old individuals showed significantly greater increases in ambulatory diastolic blood pressure compared with younger individuals when dealing with daily stressors. However, results also revealed that relatively old individuals reported less of an increase in negative affect during daily stress compared with their younger counterparts. The results of this study are consistent with the age-related increase in cardiovascular risk but highlight the complex links between stress and different facets of the aging process.

Prior theory and research regarding age differences in marital interaction suggest that older couples display and experience more positivity and less negativity than middle-aged couples. However, studies of overt behavior in older couples are relatively rare and have emphasized disagreement, neglecting other important contexts for older couples such as collaboration during everyday problem solving. Further, the affiliation or communion dimension of social interaction (i.e., warmth vs. hostility) is commonly assessed, but not the control or agency dimension (e.g., dominance vs. submissiveness). The present study examined affect, cognitive appraisals, and overt behavior during disagreement (i.e., discussing a current conflict) and collaboration (i.e., planning errands) in 300 middle-aged and older married couples. Older couples reported less negative affect during disagreement and rated spouses as warmer than did middle-aged couples. However, these effects were eliminated when older couples’ greater marital satisfaction was controlled. For observed behavior, older couples displayed little evidence of greater positivity and reduced negativity – especially women. During collaboration, older couples displayed a unique blend of warmth and control, suggesting a greater focus on emotional and social concerns during problem solving.

Maternal parenting style is associated with well-being in adolescents with diabetes, but this association is complex and moderated by age and gender.

Structural models of negative affectivity and social behavior can facilitate integrative study of psychosocial risk factors. Further, self-report measures of these traits might under-estimate related CHD risk.

Marital strain confers risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD), perhaps though cardiovascular reactivity (CVR) to stressful marital interactions. CVR to marital stressors may differ between middle-age and older adults, and types of marital interactions that evoke CVR may also differ across these age groups, as relationship contexts and stressors differ with age. We examined cardiovascular responses to a marital conflict discussion and collaborative problem solving in 300 middle-aged and older married couples. Marital conflict evoked greater increases in blood pressure, cardiac output and cardiac sympathetic activation than did collaboration. Older couples displayed smaller heart rate responses to conflict than did middle-aged couples, but larger blood pressure responses to collaboration–especially older men. These effects were maintained during a post-task recovery period. Women did not display greater CVR than men on any measure or in either interaction context, though they did display greater parasympathetic withdrawal. CVR to marital conflict could contribute to the association of marital strain with CVD for middle-aged and older men and women, but other age-related marital contexts (e.g., collaboration among older couples) may also contribute to this mechanism.