Attention-focused emotion regulation in everyday life in adulthood and old age.

Although some lab studies suggest older adults rely more on attentional deployment to regulate their emotions, little is known about age differences in specific attention deployment tactic use and how they relate to mood regulation in everyday life. The current longitudinal experience sampling study considered several different attention deployment tactics, such as shifting or focusing attention to positive and negative elements either internally or externally (thoughts and feelings vs. external environment). Younger, middle-aged, and older adults (N = 236) responded to surveys about their affective experience five times a day for 5 days, five times over the course of a year; they reported on types of attention deployment they used, how they felt, and the nature of their current situation. We also considered the role of COVID-19. Positive attention deployment tactics were the most popular tactic for all age groups and were positively related to affective experience. However, younger adults used positive internal attention focus less than the other age groups, whereas older adults used all negative attention deployment tactics less than the other age groups (all ps < .05). After the onset of COVID, participants felt more negative and increased attention shift tactics, although this varied by age. Although older adults generally seem to shift and focus attention less frequently toward negative aspects than other age groups, life challenges (such as COVID-19) may modulate their use of positive attention deployment tactics. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved).

Aging and Emotion Regulation Tactics Across the Historical Events of 2020.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Despite well-documented cognitive and physical declines with age, older adults tend to report higher emotional wellbeing than younger adults, even during the Coronavirus Disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. To understand this paradox, as well as investigate the effects of specific historical contexts, the current study examined age differences in emotion regulation related to the events of 2020 in the United States. We predicted that, due to older adults' theorized greater prioritization of hedonic goals and avoidance of arousal, older adults would report more positivity-upregulation and acceptance tactics than younger adults. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: 81 younger adults (ages 18-25) and 85 older adults (age 55+) completed a retrospective survey on their emotion regulation tactic usage for three specific events: the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak, the killing of George Floyd, and the presidential election. RESULTS: Older adults tended to rely most on acceptance-focused tactics, while younger adults tended to rely on a more even variety of tactics. However, age differences in tactic preferences varied by event, possibly due to younger adults' greater emotion regulation flexibility. DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS: Older adults' higher emotional well-being may not be primarily a result of age differences in positivity-related emotion regulation tactics, but more about differences in acceptance use.

Aging and emotion regulation during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Objectives: Self-reported emotional well-being tends to increase with age (Charles & Carstensen, Annual Review of Psychology, 61, 383-409, 2010), and this has remained true during the COVID-19 pandemic (e.g. Bruine de Bruin, The Journals of Gerontology: Series B, 76(2), e24-e29, 2021) despite older adults being disproportionately affected by the virus (CDC, Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19): Older adults, 2020). This study aimed to investigate how younger and older adults are regulating their emotions during the current pandemic. Specifically, this study measured potential age differences in acceptance (broken down into situational and emotional acceptance), because it has been identified as a possible underlying mechanism of the relationship between aging and reduced negative affect (Shallcross et al., Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 104(4), 734-749, 2013). Methods: Younger (N = 150) and older (N = 150) adults completed trait-level questionnaires of emotional and situational acceptance, and completed a task where they reacted to 24 negative, arousing COVID-19 news headlines, half of which were old-age focused, to capture trial-level acceptance use. Results: Older adults reported greater trait-level acceptance and used emotional acceptance more frequently than younger adults during the headlines task, especially on trials containing old-age focused headlines. Interestingly, younger adults reported reduced trial-level subjective arousal when engaging in emotional acceptance compared to active emotion regulation (suggesting beneficial affective outcomes of acceptance), while older adults reported no differences in arousal between trials when they engaged in acceptance and when they engaged in more active emotion regulation. Conclusion: We discuss potential explanations for these findings as well as present future research directions on acceptance across the lifespan.