Age differences in managing response to sadness elicitors using attentional deployment, positive reappraisal and suppression

Abstract

The current study investigated age differences in the use of attentional deployment, positive reappraisal, and suppression while regulating responses to sadness-eliciting content. We also tested to what extent these emotion regulation strategies were useful for each age group in managing response to age-relevant sad information. Forty-two young participants (Mage = 18.5, SE = .15) and 48 older participants (Mage = 71.42, SE = 1.15) watched four sadness-eliciting videos (about death/illness, 4–5 minutes long) under four conditions - no-regulation (no regulation instructions), attentional deployment (divert attention away), positive reappraisal (focus on positive outcomes), and suppression (conceal emotional expressions). We assessed negative emotional experience, expression, skin conductance level, and visual fixations while participants watched the emotional clips and followed the instructions for each condition. Results suggest that older adults were more successful than younger adults at implementing both attentional deployment and positive reappraisal. Ability to suppress emotions appears to remain stable with age. Within age-group comparisons suggested that for the older adults, positive reappraisal was a more useful emotion regulation strategy than the others, while the pattern among younger adults was less conclusive. Age-relevant differences in motivation and successful emotion regulatory efforts based on theoretical and empirical literatures are discussed.

Selectivity as an emotion regulation strategy: lessons from older adults

“…Some studies show no age differences in the effective suppression of negative experience [20–22], while others suggest age-related improvements in the suppression of negative emotional experience [23–24]. Of note, studies that fail to observe age differences in emotion suppression assess participants’ expression of negative emotions, not subjective experience of emotions.…”

Age differences among older adults in the use of emotion regulation strategies. What happens among over 85s and centenarians?

“…The latest cross-sectional studies in this field have found that the capacity for emotion regulation improves with age (Scheibe & Carstensen, 2010); in other words, as they grow older, people are better able to avoid negative emotions. Furthermore, a trend has also been observed which indicates that regulation capacity evolves from an instrumental or environmental strategy towards a more internal type of regulation (Blanchard-Fields, Stein, & Watson, 2004;Lohani & Isaacowitz, 2014). The emotion regulation model proposed by John (1997, 2002) argues that diverse emotion regulation strategies are used by the same individual throughout the course of their emotional response.…”

Interpersonal emotion regulation in younger and older adults

“…Specifically, older adults appear to be less effective when using detached reappraisal (Shiota & Levenson, 2009) and suppression ability seems to be maintained (Lohani & Isaacowitz, 2014). If older adults use more effective strategies and are more effective when using their preferred strategies, they may be more effective interpersonal regulators compared to younger adults.…”

“…Additionally, the use of certain strategies appears to get better with age. Older adults are more effective when using attentional deployment (Lohani & Isaacowitz, 2014) and specifically positive reappraisal (Lohani & Isaacowitz, 2014;Shiota & Levenson, 2009). …”

“…Older adults appear to be more effective than younger adults when using positive reappraisal (Lohani & Isaacowitz, 2014) and the use of this strategy appears to increase with age (Livingstone & Isaacowitz, 2018a). However, the results of the present studies are not as clear.…”