Psychological vulnerability to daily stressors in old age

Abstract

A growing numbers of intensive longitudinal studies examine the short-term variability of behavior in response to daily stressors. Collectively, these studies address the vulnerability for stress-related emotional burden as assessed in terms of the intraindividual association between daily stressors and negative affect (NA). This article provides a brief overview of the relevant research on so-called affective reactivity to daily stressors and focuses on findings on development of age-related stressor reactivity across the adult lifespan. Two theoretical propositions have been put forward. Firstly, it has been postulated that aging should be associated with increased affective reactivity, i.e. it has been assumed that the vulnerability in terms of physiological stress reactivity increases across the adult life span and, thus, a higher stress-induced emotional reactivity should result with increasing age. Secondly, it has been argued that due to the continued development of emotional self-regulation skills, there should be an age-related decrease in stress reactivity and, hence, an increased resilience. Findings on age differences in NA reactivity to daily stressors, however, have been inconsistent. A possible explanation for the inconsistent findings may lie in the fact that the postulated dynamics of increased vulnerability or resilience imply different time-related reactions to stressors. In particular, the activation and effectiveness of emotional self-regulation strategies increase with increasing time intervals from the stressors. This leads to the conclusion that with increasing age the resilience for longer periods of stress and accumulated stress should increase. Results from our own research support this hypothesis, where older adults reacted to multiple stressors in a more adaptive way than younger adults.

Mental health status of the general population, healthcare professionals, and university students during 2019 coronavirus disease outbreak in Jordan: A cross‐sectional study

“…In this study, a significant proportion of all participants ( and that elderly were less likely to be affected by stressors (Flint et al, 2010;Scott, Sliwinski, & Blanchard-Fields, 2013) and react to stressors in a more adaptive way than younger adults (Schilling & Diehl, 2015).…”

Depression, risk factors, and coping strategies in the context of social dislocations resulting from the second wave of COVID-19 in Japan

“…One set of results showed that younger age was associated with a high risk for psychological distress [4,11,13,17,19,21,22], and another set of results showed that older age was associated with a high risk [3,50]; the results in the present study were consistent with the former set of studies. The former set of results was thought to indicate that older adults could deal with stressors in a more adaptive way than younger adults [11,51], and the latter set of results was thought to indicate that elderly adults reported more psychological stress because many elderly individuals had chronic disease [3]. Since the present study involved an online survey, the older participants had good enough eyesight and cognitive function to use a device such as a mobile phone or personal computer.…”

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“…Daily life has many stressors, such as finances, illness, or job security, which can be chronic and unpredictable in nature. An individual's response to persistent stressors is, in part, determined by resilience factors, such as social support or underlying genetic polymorphisms (Schilling and Diehl, 2015 ). However, for vulnerable individuals the inability to adequately cope with chronic stressors can lead to pathological health effects, such as chronic pain syndromes (Gillespie et al, 2009 ; Leyro et al, 2010 ).…”