Differences between young and older adults in physiological and subjective responses to emotion induction using films

Abstract

Emotional response in aging is typically studied using the dimensional or the discrete models of emotion. Moreover, it is typically studied using subjective or physiological variables but not using both perspectives simultaneously. Additionally, tenderness is neglected in emotion induction procedures with older adults, with the present work being the first to include the study of physiological tenderness using film clips. This study integrated two separate approaches to emotion research, comparing 68 younger and 39 older adults and using a popular set of film clips to induce tenderness, amusement, anger, fear, sadness and disgust emotions. The direction of subjective emotional patterns was evaluated with self-reports and that of physiological emotional patterns was evaluated with a wearable emotion detection system. The findings suggest a dual-process framework between subjective and physiological responses, manifested differently in young and older adults. In terms of arousal, the older adults exhibited higher levels of subjective arousal in negative emotions and tenderness while young adults showed higher levels of physiological arousal in these emotions. These findings yield information on the multidirectionality of positive and negative emotions, corroborating that emotional changes in the adult lifespan appear to be subject to the relevance of the emotion elicitor to each age group. It is widely recognized that aging is associated with changes in the direction of emotional patterns 1 , but the knowledge of how the processes involved in emotions change as we age is still incomplete 2. In recent decades, much work has been done to establish different theories to explain emotional aging. Emotional theories such as the Socioemotional Selectivity Theory (SST 3 ; have underlined a positivity effect, whereby older adults tend to give primacy to achieving emotional gratification 1 , and avoid or mitigate exposure to negative situations 4,5. This model has been empirically studied in psychological and neuroscientific research 2,6,7 and is currently one of the most widely accepted models. However, Schweizer et al. 8 found that older adults exhibited decline in the capacity to down-regulate negative affect with film clips, which would suggest an absence of the positivity effect. Other authors have suggested that differences in the emotional experience depend on the stimuli used in the Mood Induction Procedure (MIP) 9. For example, different studies have found that older adults present greater emotional responses when the eliciting stimuli involve irrevocable personal loss or deal with social injustice 10,11. Compared with the literature on subjective emotional patterns, that on physiological patterns in aging is limited. A meta-analytical review of 31 studies using different MIPs conducted in laboratory settings found that the young and older adults' physiological patterns were similar, although the amplitude of this response was

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