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

ABSTRACT

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. doi10.1146/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.