Age differences in responses to framed health messages – which can influence judgments and decisions – are critical to understand yet relatively unexplored. Age-related emotional shifts toward positivity would be expected to differentially impact the affective responses of older and younger adults to framed messages. In this study, we measured the subjective and physiological affective responses of older and younger adults to gain- and loss-framed exercise promotion messages. Relative to older adults, younger adults exhibited greater negative reactivity to loss-framed health messages. These results suggest that health message framing does matter – but depends on the age of the message recipient.

Despite theoretical claims that emotions are primarily communicated through prototypic facial expressions, empirical evidence is surprisingly scarce. This study aimed to (a) test whether children produced more components of a prototypic emotional facial expression during situations judged or self-reported to involve the corresponding emotion than situations involving other emotions (termed "intersituational specificity"), (b) test whether children produced more components of the prototypic expression corresponding to a situation's judged or self-reported emotion than components of other emotional expressions (termed "intrasituational specificity"), and (c) examine coherence between children's self-reported emotional experience and observers' judgments of children's emotions. One hundred and 20 children (ages 7-9) were video-recorded during a discussion with their mothers. Emotion ratings were obtained for children in 441 episodes. Children's nonverbal behaviors were judged by observers and coded by FACS-trained researchers. Children's self-reported emotion corresponded significantly to observers' judgments of joy, anger, fear, and sadness but not surprise. Multilevel modeling results revealed that children produced joy facial expressions more in joy episodes than nonjoy episodes (supporting intersituational specificity for joy) and more joy and surprise expressions than other emotional expressions in joy and surprise episodes (supporting intrasituational specificity for joy and surprise). However, children produced anger, fear, and sadness expressions more in noncorresponding episodes and produced these expressions less than other expressions in corresponding episodes. Findings suggest that communication of negative emotion during social interactions-as indexed by agreement between self-report and observer judgments-may rely less on prototypic facial expressions than is often theoretically assumed. (PsycINFO Database Record

Interrelations among cultural values, parenting practices, and adolescent aggression were examined using longitudinal data collected from Chinese adolescents and their mothers. Adolescents’ overt and relational aggression were assessed using peer nominations at Time 1 (7th grade) and Time 2 (9th grade). Mothers reported endorsement of cultural values (collectivism and social harmony) and parenting practices (psychological control and inductive reasoning) at Time 1. While controlling for Time 1 adolescent aggression, maternal collectivism and social harmony indirectly and longitudinally linked to adolescent aggression through maternal parenting practices. Specifically, maternal collectivism was positively related to inductive reasoning, which, in turn, negatively related to adolescent overt aggression at Time 2. Similarly, maternal social harmony negatively related to psychological control that positively predicted later adolescent relational aggression. Results of the present study shed light on mechanisms through which culture may indirectly influence adolescent aggression.

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SST provides a framework for exploring age-related shifts in exercise motivation. Additionally, the positivity effect was reflected in how older adults evaluated the influence of peripheral others. Motivational messages could be tailored to increase health behavior changes by focusing on instrumental exercise goals for younger adults and exercise focused on meaningful relationships for older adults.