IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/geronb/v73y2018i4p603-611..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Age Differences in Emotion Regulation Choice: Older Adults Use Distraction Less Than Younger Adults in High-Intensity Positive Contexts

Author

Listed:
  • Bruna Martins
  • Gal Sheppes
  • James J Gross
  • Mara Mather

Abstract

ObjectivesPrevious research demonstrates that younger and older adults prefer distraction over engagement (reappraisal) when regulating high-intensity negative emotion. Older adults also demonstrate a greater bias for positive over negative information in attention and memory compared with younger adults. In this study, we investigated whether emotion regulation choice preferences may differ as a function of stimulus valence with age.MethodThe effect of stimulus intensity on negative and positive emotion regulation strategy preferences was investigated in younger and older men. Participants indicated whether they favored distraction or reappraisal to attenuate emotional reactions to negative and positive images that varied in intensity.ResultsMen in both age-groups preferred distraction over reappraisal when regulating high-intensity emotion. As no age-related strategic differences were found in negative emotion regulation preferences, older men chose to distract less from high-intensity positive images than did younger men.DiscussionOlder men demonstrated greater engagement with highly positive emotional contexts than did younger men. Thus, age differences in emotion regulation goals when faced with intense emotional stimuli depend on the valence of the emotional stimuli.

Suggested Citation

  • Bruna Martins & Gal Sheppes & James J Gross & Mara Mather, 2018. "Age Differences in Emotion Regulation Choice: Older Adults Use Distraction Less Than Younger Adults in High-Intensity Positive Contexts," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 73(4), pages 603-611.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:geronb:v:73:y:2018:i:4:p:603-611.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/geronb/gbw028
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Tianyuan Li & Helene H. Fung & Derek M. Isaacowitz, 2010. "The Role of Dispositional Reappraisal in the Age-Related Positivity Effect," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 66(1), pages 56-60.
    2. Eric S. Allard & Elizabeth A. Kensinger, 2014. "Age-Related Differences in Functional Connectivity During Cognitive Emotion Regulation," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 69(6), pages 852-860.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Felipe E. García & Pablo Vergara-Barra & Pablo Concha-Ponce & Mariela Andrades & Paulina Rincón & Mauricio Valdivia-Devia, 2023. "The Emotion Regulation Questionnaire: Psychometric Properties and Prediction of Posttraumatic Consequences during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Chilean Adults," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(4), pages 1-13, February.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Christopher C Stewart & Patricia A Boyle & Bryan D James & Lei Yu & S Duke Han & David A Bennett, 2018. "Associations of APOE ε4 With Health and Financial Literacy Among Community-Based Older Adults Without Dementia," The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, The Gerontological Society of America, vol. 73(5), pages 778-786.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:geronb:v:73:y:2018:i:4:p:603-611.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/psychsocgerontology .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.