Age differences in regulating negative emotions via attentional deployment

Psychology and Aging
Maria Wirth, Ute Kunzmann

Abstract

Although past theoretical work has proposed age-related gains in emotion regulation, the empirical evidence is not entirely consistent. In two laboratory studies, we investigated age differences in regulating negative emotions through attentional deployment by instructing participants to direct their attention either toward negative (up-regulation) or neutral (down-regulation) pictorial content. The regulation process (visual attention) was measured via eye-tracking and the regulation outcome (emotional experience) was assessed via self-report. We tested emotional arousal and attentional functioning as factors that may affect age differences in attentional deployment. The main analyses revealed that, first, during down-regulation trials, older adults were less likely to direct their attention toward neutral stimulus content than younger adults, but did not experience greater unpleasantness than younger adults. This indicates that older adults may use attentional deployment more efficiently to decrease negative emotions than younger adults. Second, emotional arousal did not affect age differences in emotion regulation process and outcome. Third, we obtained preliminary evidence that for older but not for younger adults, low cogn...Continue Reading

Citations

Jun 5, 2019·Neuropsychological Rehabilitation·Leanne RowlandsOliver H Turnbull
Sep 9, 2020·International Journal of Psychophysiology : Official Journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology·Zhiyuan LiuXiuyan Guo

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