How Often and Why Do People Manage Their Emotions in Older Adulthood?

Abstract

Objectives: Prominent theories of adult development suggest individuals increasingly prioritize emotional goals and social relationships as they age. Accordingly, older adults are expected to invest more in maintaining their emotional well-being compared with younger adults. Prior work suggests older adults may accomplish this goal by structuring their lives in ways that reduce the need to actively manage unwanted emotion. We tested the hypotheses that (a) older adults regulate their emotions less often in daily life compared with younger adults, and (b) when emotion regulation occurs, older adults are more motivated than younger adults by prohedonic and social concerns.

Method: Using experience sampling (7x/day for 9 days), we assessed emotion regulation frequency and motives in younger adults (n = 75), cognitively normal older adults (n = 93), and older adults with mild cognitive impairment (MCI; n = 63).

Results: Emotion regulation was less frequent for older adults with MCI (16%) and without MCI (18%) compared with younger adults (43%), even when controlling for emotional experience. However, few differences in emotion regulation motives emerged and they were not robust to controlling for age group differences in emotion.

Discussion: These findings extend previous work on emotion regulation in aging, which largely has focused on strategies, by documenting age differences in how often, but not why, people regulate. Future work is needed to explore how age-related differences in life contexts might result in less need for emotion regulation in older adults. Conserving effort directed toward emotion regulation could be particularly beneficial among older adults with more limited cognitive resources.