Systematic review and meta-analysis of age-related differences in instructed emotion regulation success

Abstract

The process model of emotion regulation (ER) is based on stages in the emotion generative process at which regulation may occur. This meta-analysis examines age-related differences in the subjective, behavioral, and physiological outcomes of instructed ER strategies that may be initiated after an emotional event has occurred; attentional deployment, cognitive change, and response modulation. Within-process strategy, stimulus type, and valence were also tested as potential moderators of the effect of age on ER. A systematic search of the literature identified 156 relevant comparisons from 11 studies. Few age-related differences were found. In our analysis of the subjective outcome of response modulation strategies, young adults used expressive enhancement successfully (g = 0.48), but not expressive suppression (g = 0.04). Response modulation strategies had a small positive effect among older adults, and enhancement vs suppression did not moderate this success (g = 0.31 and g = 0.10, respectively). Young adults effectively used response modulation to regulate subjective emotion in response to pictures (g = 0.41) but not films (g = 0.01). Older adults were able to regulate in response to both pictures (g = 0.26) and films (g = 0.11). Interestingly, both age groups effectively used detached reappraisal, but not positive reappraisal to regulate emotional behavior. We conclude that, in line with well-established theories of socioemotional aging, there is a lack of evidence for age differences in the effects of instructed ER strategies, with some moderators suggesting more consistent effectiveness for older compared to younger adults.

Measuring inter-individual differences in stress sensitivity during MR-guided prostate biopsy

“…Potentially related to this, our findings indicate that a higher tendency towards suppression of emotional facial expressions and feelings in general, as indicated by the emotion regulation questionnaire is associated to a weaker drop in positive affect over the course of the biopsy, but also to an increase in negative affect. These finding are in line with the notion that older adults might be more efficient in selecting and deploying regulation strategies as opposed to being more efficient in the strategies themselves [17][18][19] . The increased within network functional connectivity in experienced meditators 20 and social regulation experts 21 , with increased automaticity of a cognitive process 22 and with increasing age 23 .…”

“…Higher well-being and emotional stability has been linked to enhanced emotion regulation abilities 17 . A recent meta-analysis on the effectiveness of emotion regulation strategies in older versus younger adults 18 found no major differences in the effectiveness of reappraisal or distancing strategies and only mildly stronger effects for response modulation techniques in older adults. Potentially related to this, our findings indicate that a higher tendency towards suppression of emotional facial expressions and feelings in general, as indicated by the emotion regulation questionnaire is associated to a weaker drop in positive affect over the course of the biopsy, but also to an increase in negative affect.…”

Employee age moderates within-person associations of daily negative work events with emotion regulation, attention, and well-being

“…Emotion regulation, in turn, is a demonstrated mediator of links between affective work experiences and outcomes (Adams & Webster, 2013;Totterdell et al, 2012). Yet, while age differences in emotion regulation have been studied in the laboratory (Brady et al, 2018) and in daily life without accounting for daily stressors (e.g., Eldesouky & English, 2018), the interplay of age, stressful daily events, and spontaneous emotion regulation has rarely been assessed directly in the work setting.…”

Positive and Detached Reappraisal of Threatening Music in Younger and Older Adults

“…Although the studies above suggest the existence of a differential impact of positive and detached reappraisal depending on age, other recent findings indicate that both age groups show mood improvement when using cognitive appraisal whatever the positive or detached modality (Allard and Kensinger, 2017;Livingstone and Isaacowitz, 2018). A recent meta-analysis on age-related differences in ability to implement emotion-regulation instruction, including previously cited studies and also unpublished sources of data, concludes that both young and older adults better regulate the behavioral indicators of emotion when using detached reappraisal relative to positive reappraisal (Brady et al, 2018). In view of such discrepant findings, further investigative efforts are needed.…”

“…Focusing on the effect of cognitive decline on emotional processing, the DIT model postulates that older adults may still be able to regulate their emotion only when facing emotional stimuli of low intensity. When facing highly negative emotions, older adults tend to automatically distance from them (e.g., Brady et al, 2018), then abolishing the cognitive cost elicited by the elaborate processing of negative events considered as cognitively much more complex (Labouvie-Vief, 2008). SST assumes that the more cognitive resources older adults have, the better they are able to reappraise the emotional significance of the event, whereas DIT argues that the fewer cognitive resources older adults have, the better they are able to downregulate negative emotion, not through an emotional reappraisal per se (which would be too resource demanding), but through a mechanism allowing them to disengage from the source of emotion.…”