Age, stress, and emotional complexity: Results from two studies of daily experiences.

Abstract

Experiencing positive and negative emotions together (i.e., co-occurrence) has been described as a marker of positive adaptation during stress and a strength of socio-emotional aging. Using data from daily diary (N=2,022; ages 33-84) and ecological momentary assessment (N=190; ages 20-80) studies, we evaluate the utility of a common operationalization of co-occurrence, the within-person correlation between positive affect (PA) and negative affect (NA). Then we test competing predictions regarding when co-occurrence will be observed and whether age differences will be present. Results indicate that the correlation is not an informative indicator of co-occurrence. Although correlations were stronger and more negative when stressors occurred (typically interpreted as lower co-occurrence), objective counts of emotion reports indicated that positive and negative emotions were more 3 to 4 times likely to co-occur when stressors were reported. This suggests that co-occurrence reflects the extent to which negative emotions intrude on typically positive emotional states, rather than the extent to which people maintain positive emotions during stress. The variances of both PA and NA increased at stressor reports, indicating that individuals reported a broader not narrower range of emotion during stress. Finally, older age was associated with less variability in NA and a lower likelihood of co-occurring positive and negative emotions. In sum, these findings cast doubt on the utility of the PA-NA correlation as an index of emotional co-occurrence, and question notion that greater emotional cooccurrence represents either a typical or adaptive emotional state in adults.

Mixed emotions across adulthood: when, where, and why?

“…In contrast, other momentary sampling studies, one including adults 18 to 89 years-old [10] and another with adults 23 to 90 years-old [11], found no age differences in the covariance of positive and negative affect. Still another cross-sectional study found less emotion covariation with age [12*]. This final study observed that people reported experiencing positive emotions in the vast majority of sampling periods (97%), but experienced negative emotions primarily when daily stressors occurred.…”

“…Emotional experiences, then, are the signature of what has produced them, whether these elicitors are random neuronal firings, our thoughts, or the events and environment around us. Studies that have examined the context of emotional experience find that differences in emotional elicitors, such as daily stressors, are responsible for age differences in mean levels of negative emotions [17], the variability of negative emotions throughout the week [18], and the co-occurrence of positive and negative affect [12*]. Given that emotions do not occur in a vacuum, taking into account the context of daily life is necessary to understand mixed emotions, their adaptiveness, and how they relate to aging.…”

Older adults’ affective experiences across 100 days are less variable and less complex than younger adults’.

“…It follows that an agerelated reduction of the negative association between PA and NA may emerge from reduced variability-whether this is the case cannot be resolved when merely providing information about the co-occurrence index. This issue has been highlighted previously (Griihn et al, 2013), and one very recent publication empirically addressed it (Scott et al, 2014), but with a different emphasis than this study.…”

The Application of Intensive Longitudinal Methods to Investigate Change: Stimulating the Field of Applied Family Research

“…They have been used to study marital and family relationships and stress among other topics (e.g., Birditt, Nevitt, & Almeida, 2014; Grzywacz, Almeida, & McDonald, 2002; Scott, Sliwinski, Mogle, & Almeida, 2014; Sin, Graham-Engeland, & Almeida, 2015). …”