Situation Selection and Modification for Emotion Regulation in Younger and Older Adults

Abstract

This research investigated age differences in use and effectiveness of situation selection and situation modification for emotion regulation. Socioemotional selectivity theory suggests stronger emotional well-being goals in older age; emotion regulation may support this goal. Younger and older adults assigned to an emotion regulation or “just view” condition first freely chose to engage with negative, neutral, or positive material (situation selection), then chose to view or skip negative and positive material (situation modification), rating affect after each experience. In both tasks, older adults in both goal conditions demonstrated pro-hedonic emotion regulation, spending less time with negative material compared to younger adults. Younger adults in the regulate condition also engaged in pro-hedonic situation selection, but not modification. Whereas situation selection was related to affect, modification of negative material was not. This research supports more frequent pro-hedonic motivation in older age, as well as age differences in use of early-stage emotion regulation.

Aging and emotions: experience, regulation, and perception

“…When instructed to minimize negative emotions, both younger and older adults avoided engaging with negative material; older adults also showed this tendency when instructed to choose what was interesting to them [18]. When facing a tedious task, younger adults’ mood quickly declined, whereas older adults maintained positive pre-task feelings longer [19].…”

Interpersonal emotion regulation in younger and older adults

“…Thus, the task in the present study could not assess other process model strategies like situation selection or situation modification which show age differences (Livingstone & Isaacowitz, 2015). Future studies should investigate if there is a temporal effect on interpersonal emotion regulation.…”

“…In other words, they could not choose to use any situation selection or situation modification strategies because they did not have control over the situation. This may have limited the possible age differences found in the present study because previous research suggests that older adults tend to use more situation selection and modification when regulating their own emotions compared to younger adults (Livingstone & Isaacowitz, 2015). Study 2 addresses this limitation by altering the behavioral task.…”

“…Within the lab, researchers have presented more mixed findings for non-social situations. Without specific regulation goals provided by the experimenter, older adults tend to choose to avoid negativity more often than younger adults (Livingstone & Isaacowitz, 2015). However, as demonstrated in a recent metaanalysis, older and younger adults do not demonstrate overall differences when selecting between positive, negative, and neutral stimuli (Sands, Livingstone, & Isaacowitz, 2017).…”

“…In addition, older adults tend to prefer reappraisal to suppression (John & Gross, 2004). Finally, compared to younger adults, older adults more frequently alter their physical environment by removing negativity, which demonstrates a more frequent use of situation modification (Livingstone & Isaacowitz, 2015). However, it is unclear if older adults favor situation modification in social settings because they typically would attempt to avoid interpersonal distress.…”