Characterizing age-related positivity effects in situation selection

Abstract

Situation selection—choosing to enter or avoid situations based on how they will likely make you feel—is theorized to be a useful emotion regulation strategy, especially in older age (Charles, 2010; Urry & Gross, 2010). However, research on the use of situation selection for emotion regulation is limited, and the existing findings about age differences are mixed, with some studies finding age differences and others not. We investigated whether there are overall age differences in the types of emotional situations people select by conducting a “mini” meta-analysis to synthesize all existing data from a situation selection paradigm used in our lab. We also explored potential moderators of age differences in situation selection, including properties of the stimuli options and information available to participants. We did not find overall age differences in the emotional situations younger and older adults select, though age differences are larger in contexts in which emotional information is more relevant or highly arousing.

Aging and attention to self-selected emotional content: A novel application of mobile eye tracking to the study of emotion regulation in adulthood and old age.

“…We did not find consistent age differences in situation selection. This is consistent with some past studies on age differences in situation selection (Isaacowitz et al, 2015; Rovenpor et al, 2013; Sands et al, in press). In the current study, we manipulated mood before starting the task, because age-differences in attentional deployment are more apparent when participants are already in negative moods they might like to get out of (see Isaacowitz et al, 2008).…”

“…To test whether older adults are more positive in their situation selection, we designed an “Affective Environment” in which participants choose to engage with stimuli varying in valence and have their choices and mood recorded. Across several behavioral studies, findings of age differences in situation selection have been somewhat mixed (see Sands, Livingstone, & Isaacowitz, in press). The first several studies found no evidence of age differences in choices (Isaacowitz, Livingstone, Harris, & Marcotte, 2015; Rovenpor, Skogsberg, & Isaacowitz, 2013), though a more recent study in which instructions were varied found some evidence for more positive choices with age (Livingstone & Isaacowitz, 2015).…”

Arousal reappraisal in younger and older adults.

“…Because older adults value low arousal states (Scheibe et al, 2013) and make efforts to avoid engaging with arousing content (Sands et al, 2018) more than younger adults, perhaps due to declines in physiological flexibility with age (SAVI; Charles, 2010), we predict older adults would be less successful using their physiological arousal as a tool to support their performance. However, older adults in the challenge condition successfully reappraised their arousal and achieved benefits to performance while also exhibiting smaller changes in physiological activity than younger participants.…”

A relational perspective on emotion regulation across adulthood

“…There is also higher use of passive versus proactive strategies in middle‐aged adults compared with older adults (Blanchard‐Fields et al., 2004) and in young‐old adults compared with those aged 85 and older (Etxeberria et al., 2016). However, experiments monitoring how individuals interact with “affective environments” have found little support for age‐related increases in situation selection (Sands et al., 2018). Individual differences work suggests that older adults retrospectively report more acceptance than younger adults (Schirda et al., 2016).…”