Aging and Emotion Regulation Tactics Across the Historical Events of 2020.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Despite well-documented cognitive and physical declines with age, older adults tend to report higher emotional well-being than younger adults, even during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. To understand this paradox, as well as investigate the effects of specific historical contexts, the current study examined age differences in emotion regulation related to the events of 2020 in the United States. We predicted that, due to older adults' theorized greater prioritization of hedonic goals and avoidance of arousal, older adults would report more positivity-upregulation and acceptance tactics than younger adults. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: Eighty-one younger adults (aged 18-25) and 85 older adults (age 55+) completed a retrospective survey on their emotion regulation tactic usage for 3 specific events: the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, the killing of George Floyd, and the presidential election. RESULTS: Older adults tended to rely most on acceptance-focused tactics, while younger adults tended to rely on a more even variety of tactics. However, age differences in tactic preferences varied by event, possibly due to younger adults' greater emotion regulation flexibility. DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS: Older adults' higher emotional well-being may not be primarily a result of age differences in positivity-related emotion regulation tactics but more about differences in acceptance use.

Interpersonal emotion regulation strategy choice in younger and older adults.

When managing their emotions, individuals often recruit the help of others; however, most emotion regulation research has focused on self-regulation. Theories of emotion and aging suggest younger and older adults differ in the emotion regulation strategies they use when regulating their own emotions. If how individuals regulate their own emotions and the emotions of others are related, these theorised age differences may also emerge for interpersonal emotion regulation. In two studies, younger and older adults' intrapersonal and interpersonal emotion regulation strategy choices were examined via self-report and behavioural assessments of regulating the emotions of another participant (Study 1; N = 80) and of a virtual human (Study 2; N = 100). Across both studies, younger adults reported greater intrapersonal suppression but not greater reappraisal. Younger and older adults were generally similar (supported by Bayesian analyses) for both self-reported and behavioural interpersonal emotion regulation strategies. Behavioural interpersonal emotion regulation was not related to self-reported intra- and interpersonal preferences. These results suggest interpersonal emotion regulation in ageing may show distinct patterns from theorised age differences in intrapersonal emotion regulation.

More Positive or Less Negative? Emotional Goals and Emotion Regulation Tactics in Adulthood and Old Age.

OBJECTIVES: Despite declines in physical and cognitive functioning, older adults report higher levels of emotional well-being (Charles, S. T., & Carstensen, L. L. (2010). Social and emotional aging. Annual Review of Psychology, 61, 383-409. doi:10.1146/annurev.psych.093008.100448). Motivational accounts suggest that differences in goals lead to age-related differences in affect through differences in emotion regulation behaviors, but evidence for age differences in emotion regulation strategy use is inconsistent. Emotion regulation tactics (i.e., how a strategy is implemented) may reveal greater age differences. Specifically, this study tested whether older adults rely more on positivity-seeking or negativity-avoidance tactics and whether goals alter tactic use. METHODS: An adult lifespan sample (ages 18-90, N = 211) completed 3 different emotion regulation tasks while being assigned to 1 of 4 goal conditions: just view, information-seeking, increase-positive, or decrease-negative. Three tactics were measured-positivity-seeking, negativity-avoidance, and negativity-seeking-by comparing time spent engaging with positive, negative, and neutral stimuli. RESULTS: Goal instructions only influenced tactic use and affective outcomes in some instances. Instead, younger adults tended to consistently prefer positivity-seeking tactics and older adults preferred negativity-avoidance tactics. DISCUSSION: Older age may be characterized more by an avoidance of negativity than engagement with positivity; manipulation of goals may not modify these age-related tendencies.

Aging and emotion regulation during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Objectives: Self-reported emotional well-being tends to increase with age (Charles & Carstensen, Annual Review of Psychology, 61, 383-409, 2010), and this has remained true during the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g. Bruine de Bruin, The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, 76(2), e24-e29, 2021) despite older adults being disproportionately affected by the virus (CDC, Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19): Older adults, 2020). This study aimed to investigate how younger and older adults are regulating their emotions during the current pandemic. Specifically, this study measured potential age differences in acceptance (broken down into situational and emotional acceptance), because it has been identified as a possible underlying mechanism of the relationship between aging and reduced negative affect (Shallcross et al., Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 104(4), 734-749, 2013). Methods: Younger (N = 150) and older (N = 150) adults completed trait-level questionnaires of emotional and situational acceptance, and completed a task where they reacted to 24 negative, arousing COVID-19 news headlines, half of which were old-age focused, to capture trial-level acceptance use. Results: Older adults reported greater trait-level acceptance and used emotional acceptance more frequently than younger adults during the headlines task, especially on trials containing old-age focused headlines. Interestingly, younger adults reported reduced trial-level subjective arousal when engaging in emotional acceptance compared to active emotion regulation (suggesting beneficial affective outcomes of acceptance), while older adults reported no differences in arousal between trials when they engaged in acceptance and when they engaged in more active emotion regulation. Conclusion: We discuss potential explanations for these findings as well as present future research directions on acceptance across the lifespan.