This study investigated age differences in the ability to suppress and amplify expressive behavior during emotional arousal. Young and old participants viewed 3 film clips about medical procedures while their behavioral, autonomic, and subjective responses were recorded. Half of the participants viewed all 3 films without additional instructions; the other half was asked to suppress and amplify their behavioral expression during the 2nd and 3rd films. Except for heart rate, suppression and amplification produced similar patterns of autonomic activation. Neither suppression nor amplification had effects on self-reported emotion. There were no age differences in the ability to suppress or amplify emotional expression or in their physiological or subjective consequences. Considering that older people's unregulated reactivity was lower than that of young adults, suppression may have been easier and amplification more difficult for older adults. Voluntary emotion regulation might be one domain of human performance that is spared from age-related losses.

Cross-cultural research would be greatly aided by the availability of psychometrically sound measures of meaningful cultural dimensions of variability on the individual level. We report six studies that establish the validity and reliability of an individual-based assessment inventory of individualistic versus collectivistic tendencies in four social relationships (the Individualism-Collectivism Interpersonal Assessment Inventory-ICIAI). The results of the first five studies provide strong evidence for the reliability and validity of the ICIAI. The sixth study, including data from four different countries and four different ethnic groups within the United States, demonstrate the utility of the ICIAI to map cultural differences in multiple contexts and rating domains.

This study examined differences in emotional expression, experience, and the coherence between expression and experience in idiocentric and allocentric individuals, who participated in a study similar to Friesen's (1972) original display rule study. Encoders, classified as idiocentric or allocentric based on a measure of psychological culture, were unobtrusively videotaped as they viewed positive and negative films in two contexts -alone, and then a second time either alone or with an experimenter present. Subjective emotional responding was assessed following each of the film viewing sessions and, using the encoders' videotaped data, their emotional expressions were judged by a separate sample of decoders. Emotional expression and coherence differed as a function of encoder culture and viewing condition; experience did not. These findings replicate and extend the only other cross-cultural experiment of spontaneous emotional expressions in adults conducted over thirty years ago Friesen, 1972), and speak to the influence of culture as a sociopsychological construct, given that all participants were European American females.Cross-cultural research on emotional expressions has a long history in the study of emotion, and a profound influence on psychology in general (see, e.g.

Retirement satisfaction was predicted from the emotional qualities of pre-retirement marital interaction in 49 male (M age = 63) and 31 female (M age = 61) retirees. In 1989, we measured physiological, behavioral, and subjective aspects of emotion while spouses discussed a conflict in their marriage. Five years later, we assessed retirement satisfaction for spouses who had retired in the intervening period. Husbands who were physiologically relaxed and affectively positive during marital interaction were happier in their subsequent retirements. Wives' retirement satisfaction was not predicted by the emotional qualities of marital interaction. KEY WORDS: emotion • long-term marriage • marital interaction • retirement satisfactionOver the course of a long-term marriage, couples will navigate a number of life transitions. Transitions that occur relatively early in marriage include moving in together, becoming a parent, children reaching adolescence, relocations, and job changes. Examples of life transitions later in marriage include becoming grandparents, changing health, death of parents, retirement, and widowhood. A common feature of these transitions is that they bring about changes in roles, identities, expectations, attitudes, and relationships both with one's spouse and with other family members. In Journal of Social and Personal Relationships

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