Research suggests that older adulthood is a time of increasing losses in several domains, which decreases control capacity relative to younger adulthood. Despite these losses, older adults also experience increased emotional well-being compared to younger adulthood. This "paradox of aging" is counter to research that suggests losses of control lead to worse emotional well-being, and point toward the importance of evaluations of control, rather than capacity. The current study used ambiguous scenarios to investigate the relationship between evaluations of control and emotion between younger and older adulthood. Older and younger participants read fourteen ambiguous scenarios and after each scenario they appraised them on three different control dimensions: self-control, other-control, and circumstantial-control. Afterward, they rated their feelings. The results showed that older adults had greater differences between self-, other-, and circumstantial-control relative to younger adults (F(2, 196) = 16.37, p < .001 n2 = .086), and that older adults experienced less negative emotion (t(98) = 4.03, p < .001, d = .81), but equal positive emotion compared to younger adults (t(98) = -.662, p = .51, d = -.13). More importantly, we found that appraisals of control eliminated age-related differences in emotional experience (F(1, 95) = 3.29, p = .073, n2 = .026), suggesting that age differences in emotional experience are related to age differences in control appraisals. These findings reflect the importance of considering the role of appraisal processes in age differences in emotional experience.

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