Age differences in anticipatory emotion regulation
Permanent URL:
http://hdl.handle.net/2047/D20252473
DeSteno, David (Committee member)
Kim, Nancy (Committee member)
Urry, Heather (Committee member)
Study 1 examined how anticipatory emotion regulation behavior influenced young (n = 52, Mage = 19.66) and older (n = 59, Mage = 70.02) adults affective experience, physiological reactivity, and task performance in a negative high-arousal context. Participants were first provided with a detailed description of an upcoming evaluative stress task. Then, before the stress task, they regulated their affective state by selecting an affective stimulus from a set that varied in valence (positive/negative) and arousal (low/high). Participants across age groups were most likely to select positive videos regardless of arousal, despite previous research suggesting that older adults prefer low arousal states (Sands, Garbacz & Isaacowitz, 2016). Participants who made positive selections initially felt better than those that selected negative content; however, they experienced a sharp decline in mood leading up to the stress task whereas participants that made negative selections experienced worse but more consistent moods. Interestingly, negative selections were linked to better performance on the speech task across age groups. Additionally, the arousal of selections had important implications for physiological reactivity, especially for older adults. In sum, these findings suggest that, when anticipating a negative situation, participants preemptively increase positive emotions. However, while positive selections served to temporarily improve mood, the effects did not last throughout the stress task. It is unclear if anticipatory emotion regulation would be similar across age groups in other contexts; therefore, it is important to vary the arousal of the anticipated situation and target emotions that are known to vary with age.
Study 2 investigated how young (n = 125) and older adults (n = 117) wanted to feel prior to experiencing negative emotions known to vary with age (i.e., anger or sadness). Participants were informed that they would watch a video that elicits high levels of anger or sadness or were assigned to a control condition in which they did not anticipate an emotional experience. Before watching the video, participants completed the same emotion regulation task as in Study 1. Overall, participants were most likely to select positive videos. Anticipation condition did not influence emotion regulation selections, but there was an age effect with more variability in young adults selections than older adults. The videos selected in the emotion regulation task also influenced affective experience in the sad and anger inducing situations; older adults reported lower levels of arousal if they selected a low arousal video, whereas young adults reported lower levels of arousal if they selected a high arousal video. Across studies, individuals preferred to increase positive affect prior to a negative experience. Although there were not consistent age differences in anticipatory emotion regulation behavior, the affective selections participants made had important implications for their affective states, particularly regarding arousal. In sum, this dissertation demonstrated the importance of examining anticipatory processes as a form of emotion regulation across the lifespan.
aging
choice
emotion regulation
older adults
situation selection
Copyright restrictions may apply.