Autonomic, subjective, and expressive responses to emotional films in older and younger Chinese Americans and European Americans.

Abstract

Previously, the authors found that during idiosyncratic emotional events (relived emotions, discussions about marital conflict), older European American adults demonstrated smaller changes in cardiovascular responding than their younger counterparts (R. W. Levenson, L. L. Carstensen, W. V. Friesen, & P. Ekman, 1991; R. W. Levenson, L. L. Carstensen, & J. M. Gottman, 1994). This study examined whether such differences held when the emotional events were standardized, and whether they extend to another cultural group. Forty-eight old (70-85 years) and 48 young (20-34 years) European Americans and Chinese Americans viewed sad and amusing film clips in the laboratory while their cardiovascular, subjective (online and retrospective), and behavioral responses were measured. Consistent with previous findings, older participants evidenced smaller changes in cardiovascular responding than did younger participants during the film clips. Consistent with earlier reports, old and young participants did not differ in most subjective and behavioral responses to the films. No cultural differences were found.

Age-related decline in the ability to decode emotional prosody: Primary or secondary phenomenon?

“…Whilst the ability to interpret facial emotion also seems to decline with age, in many other respects the emotional processing abilities of older adults are comparable to those of young adults. Older adults do not differ from young adults in their self-reports of emotion intensity (Carstensen, Pasupathi, Mayr & Nesselroade, 2000), in emotion-specific patterns of autonomic nervous system response (Levenson, Carstensen, Friesen & Ekman, 1994), nor in their spontaneous production of facial expressions (Tsai, Levenson & Carstensen, 2000). In view of the stark contrast between age-related effects on these two groups of abilities, future research needs to establish what causes the age-related decline in ability to decode emotional prosody.…”

Estrogen modifies arousal but not memory for emotional events in older women

“…Thus they attend less to negative stimuli and show greater amygdala activation to positive versus negative stimuli (Mather et al, 2004). In addition, they show diminished cardiovascular response when discussing emotional conflicts (Levenson et al, 1994), viewing sad or amusing films (Tsai et al, 2000), and have diminished heart rate deceleration and corrugators EMG response to images in all valence categories (negative, neutral, and positive) as compared to young .…”

Stress, coping, coping effectiveness and emotions in Malaysian Elite tenpin bowlers: Role of context and importance

“…There is also evidence that culture is an important factor in shaping emotions. While the physiological response associated with emotions appears to be invariant, the behavioural expression (facial in particular) varies across cultures (Tsai, Levenson, & Carstensen, 2000). East Asians, for example, are more likely to engage in dialectical thinking believing that positive and negative feelings co-exist (Safdar et al, 2009).…”