Age differences among older adults in the use of emotion regulation strategies. What happens among over 85s and centenarians?

Etxeberría, Igone; Etxebarría, Itziar; Urdaneta, Elena; Yanguas, José Javier

doi:10.1080/13607863.2015.1050995

Cited by 15 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…However, they might become motivated to use suppression later in life to avoid engaging with intense stressors (e.g., poor health; Charles, 2010). Some indirect evidence for this hypothesis comes from a study where adults 85 years and older reported regulating their emotions in more passive ways (e.g., suppressing one’s emotions, avoiding the problem) than adults ages 65–84 (Etxeberria, Etxebarria, Urdaneta, & Yanguas, 2016). Thus, people may only decrease in their suppression up until early old age then increase in late old age.…”

Section: Past Findings On Emotion Regulation Strategy Use Across Adul...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Another year older, another year wiser? Emotion regulation strategy selection and flexibility across adulthood.

Eldesouky

English

2018

Psychology and Aging

125

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Several influential theories posit that improvements in emotion regulation contribute to enhanced emotional well-being in older adulthood. However, surprisingly little is known about whether there are age differences in emotion regulation strategy use. We addressed this question by testing whether older adults report using typically adaptive strategies more often and regulate more flexibly than relatively younger adults. In a two-part study, 136 married couples (N = 272) aged 23-85 years completed individual difference measures of cognitive reappraisal and expressive suppression, and then nine daily reports of a broader range of emotion regulation strategies, now including situation selection, situation modification, and distraction. Older adults reported greater habitual use of suppression, but age did not predict situation selection, situation modification, distraction, or reappraisal. In terms of emotion regulation flexibility, a similar number of strategies were reported on a daily basis regardless of the regulator's age. Unexpectedly, relatively older adults were less variable in their self-reported daily use of each strategy and middle-aged adults were the least variable in their strategy repertoire across different days. These findings counter the common notion that older adults use typically adaptive strategies more than younger adults. Instead, they suggest older adults may be more consistent in their emotion regulation patterns across situations, potentially suggestive of less flexibility. Implications for aging, emotion regulation, and well-being are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record

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Section: Past Findings On Emotion Regulation Strategy Use Across Adul...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Another year older, another year wiser? Emotion regulation strategy selection and flexibility across adulthood.

Eldesouky

English

2018

Psychology and Aging

125

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“…As to the habitual use of emotion regulation strategies, a study conducted by Etxeberria et al (2016) suggests that very old adults, as compared with young old adults, use proactive and problem-solving strategies less (e.g., venting one's emotions, confronting the source of the problem, seeking social support). However, very old individuals used so-called passive strategies such as accepting the problem, avoiding the problem, and suppressing one's feelings more often.…”

Section: Age Differences Within Old and Very Old Age: Empirical Evidencementioning

confidence: 99%

Three facets of emotion regulation in old and very old age: Strategy use, effectiveness, and variability.

Kunzmann¹,

Nestler²,

Lücke³

et al. 2024

Emotion

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The ability to regulate emotions in stressful situations is an important building block for high well-being across the lifespan. Yet, very little is known about how old and very old adults regulate their emotions. In this study, 123 young old adults (M age = 67.18, SD = 0.94) and 47 very old adults (M age = 86.70, SD = 1.46) were prompted 6 times a day for 7 consecutive days to report both their stressors and 10 emotion regulation strategies. Overall, there was little indication of age differences in the use of emotion regulation strategies during exposure to stressors, but very old, as compared with young old, individuals used three of the 10 strategies considered here more intensively. The 10 emotion regulation strategies were similarly effective across age groups based on their association with perceived overall emotion regulation success. We also did not find age group differences in within-strategy variability, defined as the variation in using a given strategy across stressor situations. By contrast, between-strategy variability, defined as the selective use of fewer rather than many strategies across stressor situations, was lower for very old participants. Only between-strategy, and not within-strategy, variability contributed to overall emotion regulation success. There was no age group difference in this regard. Taken together, the evidence suggests small age differences in emotion regulation if at all. This is noteworthy given the advanced age of the very old subsample in this study and the deficits in multiple domains of functioning reported in the literature for this advanced age.

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“…With regard to the two broad sets of emotion regulation strategies (antecedent-focused and response-focused), one overarching theme in the aging literature is that older adults prefer more passive, antecedent-focused strategies that do not involve direct confrontation with emotion generating stimuli, such that use of proactive, response-focused strategies involving direct confrontation of negative emotions declines with age (Blanchard-Fields, Stein, & Watson, 2004;Etxeberria, Etxebarria, Urdaneta, & Yanguas, 2016;Lipovcan, Prizmic, & Franc, 2009;Scheibe et al, 2015;Yeung, Fung, & Kam, 2012). Given that the ability to effectively use proactive strategies is believed to decline in late adulthood, adopting use of passive strategies may compensate for shifts in available cognitive resources (Heckhausen, 2006;Urry & Gross, 2010).…”

Section: Aging and Emotion Regulation Strategy Usementioning

confidence: 99%

Age Differences in Emotion Regulation Strategy Use in Daily Life: Implications for Emotional Well-Being

Whitmoyer¹,

Prakash²,

Isaacowitz³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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Despite the negative implications associated with increasing age for physical and cognitive health, emotional well-being appears to remain stable, if not improved, with age. This phenomenon is believed to be explained by age-related increases in motivation to regulate emotions and shifts in emotion regulation strategies to compensate for physical and cognitive declines. Yet, past studies have predominantly relied on self-report measures of dispositional strategy use that are particularly susceptible to retrospective biases, and where behavioral measures have been employed, use of regulation strategies has been limited to only one strategy at a time to modify emotional responses. Additionally, there has been limited prior research examining age differences in how emotion regulation strategies are flexibly adapted to shifts in salient contextual features (e.g., interpersonal context, type/intensity of emotion elicited) in daily life. As people often use multiple strategies to regulate their emotions and the contexts in which these strategies are implemented are ever-changing, evaluating the cumulative effects of simultaneous strategy use and strategy flexibility in daily life is critical for understanding the processes underlying age-related changes in emotional well-being. The current study recruited 130 young adults and 130 older adults for an online study where participants were asked to complete a daily diary measure of emotion regulation, in which they responded to questions about their emotional experience, emotion regulation strategy use, and salient contextual features of “episodes” in their daily life. Participants also completed questionnaires assessing overall emotional well-being including affect balance and emotion dysregulation. In Aim 1, we examined age differences in emotion regulation strategy use, variability, and flexibility (i.e., covariation of strategy use with changes in negative affect intensity) in daily life. Aim 2 investigated how strategy use and flexibility are associated with emotional well-being. Finally, Aim 3 assessed the extent to which age-related differences in emotional well-being are explained by age-group differences in emotion regulation strategy use. Relative to young adults, older adults exhibited more frequent acceptance use, less frequent distraction use, less within-strategy variability, greater between-strategy variability, and less within-strategy flexibility. Across age groups, use of expressive suppression and distraction were associated with poorer emotional well-being whereas higher acceptance flexibility, positive reappraisal flexibility, and situation selection flexibility were associated with better emotional well-being. Age group moderated emotional well-being’s relationships with positive reappraisal use, situation selection use, detached reappraisal flexibility, expressive suppression flexibility, distraction flexibility, and situation selection flexibility. Finally, significant age differences in emotional well-being were partially explained by age differences in distraction use and expressive suppression use, but not by emotion regulation flexibility, suggesting that reduced reliance on maladaptive strategy use may help explain preserved well-being in late adulthood. Despite several limitations of the current study (e.g., reliance on self-report data and examination of only one dimension of flexibility), its findings underscore the importance of examining how emotion regulation strategies are implemented in the context of daily life and suggest that how strategies are used and flexibly implemented across different affective contexts, as well as the adaptive value of these strategies, shifts with age.

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Age differences among older adults in the use of emotion regulation strategies. What happens among over 85s and centenarians?

Abstract: Age differences were observed in the use of emotion regulation strategies, with older age groups using proactive strategies less and passive strategies more.

Cited by 15 publications

References 29 publications

Another year older, another year wiser? Emotion regulation strategy selection and flexibility across adulthood.

Another year older, another year wiser? Emotion regulation strategy selection and flexibility across adulthood.

Three facets of emotion regulation in old and very old age: Strategy use, effectiveness, and variability.

Age Differences in Emotion Regulation Strategy Use in Daily Life: Implications for Emotional Well-Being

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