Emotional experience in everyday life across the adult life span.

Abstract

Age differences in emotional experience over the adult life span were explored, focusing on the frequency, intensity, complexity, and consistency of emotional experience in everyday life. One hundred eighty-four people, age 18 to 94 years, participated in an experience-sampling procedure in which emotions were recorded across a 1-week period. Age was unrelated to frequency of positive emotional experience. A curvilinear relationship best characterized negative emotional experience. Negative emotions declined in frequency until approximately age 60, at which point the decline ceased. Individual factor analyses computed for each participant revealed that age was associated with more differentiated emotional experience. In addition, periods of highly positive emotional experience were more likely to endure among older people and periods of highly negative emotional experience were less stable. Findings are interpreted within the theoretical framework of socioemotional selectivity theory.

Anticipation of monetary gain but not loss in healthy older adults

“…Event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies that have used this task in adolescents and younger adults have implicated striatal and insular activation in the anticipation of uncertain gains and losses 14,15 . Because healthy older adults report preserved (or even enhanced) positive affective experience relative to younger adults on a day-to-day basis 16 , we predicted that both subjective responses and neural activation in anticipation of rewards would be preserved in a healthy older sample. We compared subjective and neural responses to incentives between healthy younger and older adults.…”

Adult age differences in autobiographical reasoning in narratives.

“…Participants in this study were drawn from a larger study of emotion and aging (Carstensen et al, 2000). The larger study included 184 participants recruited by a survey research company, with equal numbers of men and women ranging across the entire adult life span.…”

Stability of self-esteem across the life span.

“…However, some researchers have theorized that aging entails improved coping and emotion regulation that may protect against declining feelings of well-being (Baltes & Baltes, 1990;Brandtstaedter & Greve, 1994;Carstensen, Isaacowitz, & Charles, 1999). Consistent with these divergent theoretical views, there appear to be few replicable age differences in well-being for samples over 60 years of age, with some studies showing improvements and others showing declines (e.g., Carstensen, Pasupathi, Mayr, & Nesselroade, 2000;Charles, Reynolds, & Gatz, 2001;Diener & Suh, 1998;Smith & Baltes, 1999). Moreover, when age-related declines in adjustment are found, they tend to be quite small (Smith & Baltes, 1999).…”