Motives matter more with age: Adult age differences in response to sociomoral violations.

Moral judgments and emotional reactions to sociomoral violations are heavily impacted by a perpetrator's intentions and desires, which pose a threat to social harmony. Given that older adults are more motivated to maintain interpersonal harmony relative to younger adults, older adults may be more reactive to malicious desires. In three studies, we investigated adult age differences in moral judgments and emotional reactions to sociomoral violations. In all studies, participants read scenarios in which a perpetrator either (a) desired to harm another but nothing happened, or (b) harmed another accidentally without malicious desire. Study 2 incorporated additional scenarios designed to evoke anger and disgust without explicitly implicating another person to evaluate whether age differences emerge only when sociomoral violations against another are salient. In Study 3, we examined the combined effects of malicious desires and harmful outcomes by including scenarios in which (a) harmful desires were coupled with harmful outcomes, and (b) benign desires were coupled with benign outcomes. Predominantly across the studies, older adults judged perpetrators who desired to harm another more harshly but judged perpetrators who accidentally harmed another more leniently than younger adults. Emotional reactions generally corresponded with the differences in judgments. Taken together, this work suggests that desires more strongly impact older relative to younger adults' judgments and emotional reactions in sociomoral contexts. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Falling hard, but recovering resoundingly: Age differences in stressor reactivity and recovery.

Strength and vulnerability integration (SAVI) theory (Charles, 2010) posits that age differences in emotional experiences vary based on the distance from an emotionally eliciting event. Before and after a stressor, SAVI predicts that older age is related to motivational strivings that often result in higher levels of well-being. However, during stressor exposure, age differences are predicted to be attenuated or disappear completely. The present study examined how younger (n = 85; Mage = 22.56 years) and older (n = 85; Mage = 71.05 years) adults reacted to and recovered from a cognitive stressor using repeated positive and negative emotion probes. Results showed that both age groups were negatively impacted by the stressor, and both reported an initial boost in recovery afterward. However, older adults continued to improve across the recovery period compared with younger adults. This work elucidates that older adults are significantly impacted by stress but exhibit a resounding recovery. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Emotion, Aging, and Decision Making: A State of the Art Mini-Review.

Over the past few decades, interest has begun to surge in understanding the role of emotion in decision making, and more recently in studies across the adult life span. Relevant to age-related changes in decision making, theoretical perspectives in judgment and decision making draw critical distinctions between deliberative versus intuitive/affective processes, as well as integral versus incidental affect. Empirical findings demonstrate the central role of affect in various decision-related domains such as framing and risk taking. To situate this review within an adult life-span context, we focus on theoretical perspectives in adult development regarding emotion and motivation. As a result of age differences in deliberative and emotional processes, taking a life-span perspective is critical to advance a comprehensive and grounded understanding of the role of affect in decision making. Age-related shifts in information processing from negative toward positive material also have consequential implications. By taking a life-span perspective, not only will decision theorists and researchers benefit, but so too will practitioners who encounter individuals of various ages as they make consequential decisions.

Can emotional acceptance buffer the link between executive functioning and mental health in late life?

Emotional acceptance is thought to play an important role in protecting mental health. However, few studies have examined emotional acceptance among older adults who may experience declines in functioning, including executive functioning. The present laboratory-based study examined whether emotional acceptance and (to determine specificity) detachment and positive reappraisal moderated links between executive functioning and mental health symptoms in a sample of healthy older adults. Emotion regulation strategies were measured using questionnaire-based measures (using established questionnaires) as well as performance-based measures (instructing individuals to use emotional acceptance, detachment, and positive reappraisal in response to sad film clips). Executive functioning was measured using a battery of working memory, inhibition, and verbal fluency tasks. Mental health symptoms were measured using questionnaires to assess anxiety and depressive symptoms. Results showed that (a) emotional acceptance moderated the link between executive functioning and mental health such that lower executive functioning predicted higher levels of anxiety and depressive symptoms at low but not at high levels of emotional acceptance. Moderation effects tended to be (b) stronger for emotional acceptance compared to the other emotion regulation strategies (though not all comparisons were statistically significant). Findings were (c) robust when controlling for age, gender, and education for questionnaire-based (but not performance-based) emotional acceptance. These findings contribute to the literature on emotion regulation specificity and highlight the mental health benefits of emotional acceptance in the face of low executive functioning. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

The psycholinguistic and affective processing of framed health messages among younger and older adults.

How health-related messages are framed can impact their effectiveness in promoting behaviors, and messages framed in terms of gains have been shown to be more effective among older adults. Recent findings have suggested that the affective response to framed messages can contribute to these effects. However, the impact of demands associated with psycholinguistic processing for different frames is not well understood. In this study, exercise-related messages were gain or loss framed and with a focus on either desirable or undesirable outcomes. Participants read these messages while their eye movements were monitored and then provided affective ratings. Older adults reacted less negatively than younger adults to loss-framed messages and messages focusing on undesirable outcomes. Eye-movement measures indicated both younger and older adults had difficulty processing the most complex messages (loss-framed messages focused on avoiding desirable outcomes). When gain-framed messages were easily processed, they engendered more positive affect, which in turn, was related to better recall. These results suggest that affective and cognitive mechanisms are interdependent in comprehension of framed messages for younger and older adults. An implication for translation to effective health communication is that simpler message framing engenders a positive reaction, which in turn supports memory for that information, regardless of age. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

The Appraisal Approach to Aging and Emotion: An Integrative Theoretical Framework.

To advance our understanding of how emotional experience changes across the adult life span, we propose an integrative theoretical framework: the appraisal approach to aging and emotion (AAAE). AAAE posits that (a) age-related cognitive, motivational, and physical changes fundamentally change the appraisal system in certain ways, and that (b) older adults often deploy appraisal processes in different ways relative to their younger counterparts. As such, we hypothesize that these age-related changes to the appraisal process underlie the finding that older and younger adults tend to experience different emotions. In this paper we integrate findings from the aging literature with appraisal theory, grounding AAAE in theoretical and empirical work relevant to the relationship between aging and appraisal processes. Using our theoretical framework, it is possible to identify critical points of investigation for aging and emotion researchers to further develop our understanding of the proximal-level determinants of age differences in emotion.

Getting to the Heart of the Matter in Later Life: The Central Role of Affect in Health Message Framing.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Adopting healthy behaviors is often influenced by message framing; gain-framed messages emphasize the benefits of engaging in a behavior, whereas loss-framed messages highlight the consequences of not engaging in a behavior. Research has begun to uncover the underlying affective pathways involved in message framing. In the current study, we examined the role of affect in message framing to encourage exercise program enrollment among older adults. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: We mailed flyers to 126 volunteers assigned to a gain- or loss-framed condition and measured their affective reactions to the flyer and enrollment intentions. After the call, participants had the opportunity to contact us to enroll. RESULTS: Gain versus loss framing led to more positive affect toward the flyer, which predicted intentions and enrollment effort. In indirect effect analyses, frame indirectly influenced intentions and enrollment effort via positive affect. DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS: Although message framing plays an indirect role in influencing behavior, affect plays a central role.

Affective forecasting: A selective relationship with working memory for emotion.

Affective forecasting (AF), the ability to predict one's future feelings, is important for decision making. We posit that AF entails the ability to maintain and evaluate an emotional feeling state, and thus requires affective working memory (AWM; Mikels & Reuter-Lorenz, 2019). To test this hypothesis, a series of studies investigated whether individual differences in AWM are related to AF ability. In the first study, we document that measures of AWM and AF are positively related, whereas an analogous measure of visual working memory is unrelated to AF in separate groups of participants. Two further within-group studies (1 preregistered) demonstrate that maintenance of affective information predicts AF performance, whereas maintenance of brightness information does not. Further, 2 additional measures of visual working memory (Corsi block-tapping and change detection) did not independently predict AF ability. Taken together the results demonstrate a reliable and selective relationship between AWM and AF, suggesting that AWM is a separable working memory subsystem and an elemental capacity that contributes to the type of higher-order emotional processes involved in AF. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Reactive, Agentic, Apathetic, or Challenged? Aging, Emotion, and Coping During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Advanced age is generally associated with improved emotional well-being, but the coronavirus 2019 pandemic unleashed a global stressor that gravely threatened the physical well-being and ostensibly challenged the emotional well-being of older adults disproportionately. The current study investigated differences in emotional experiences and coping strategies between younger and older adults during the pandemic, and whether these differences were accounted for by age differences in appraisal of the pandemic. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: We asked younger (n = 181) and older (n = 176) adult participants to report their stress, appraisals of the pandemic, emotions, and the ways in which they were coping with the pandemic. RESULTS: Results indicated that older adults experienced less stress and less negative affect and used greater problem-focused coping and less avoidant coping in response to the pandemic than younger adults. Furthermore, age differences in affect and coping were partially accounted for by age differences in appraisals of the pandemic. DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS: Despite their objectively higher risk of illness and death due to the pandemic, older adults experienced less negative affect and used more agentic coping strategies than younger adults.

Positivity helps the medicine go down: Leveraging framing and affective contexts to enhance the likelihood to take medications.

Affect can influence judgments and decision-making in multiple ways. One way is through (a) integral affect, or affect related to the choice at hand, and another way is through (b) incidental affect, or affect unrelated to the choice at hand. Research suggests integral affect influences risk-related decision-making, especially in the context of risky choice framing. However, the role of affect in other forms of framing (e.g., attribute framing) has received little attention. We examined how integral affect (Study 1) along with incidental affect (Study 2) can alter perceptions of risk and likelihood to take hypothetical medications. Participants read pamphlets about medications with unique side effects presented as a gain (e.g., 86% of people who took this medication did not experience nausea) or loss (e.g., 14% of people who took this medication did experience nausea). Study 2 extended Study 1 by manipulating incidental affect through positive, neutral, and negative affective contexts to examine its impact on subsequent evaluations of framed information. Studies 1 and 2 measured positive and negative feelings about medications, risk perceptions, and likelihood of taking medications. Across both studies, gain-framed attributes led to more positive integral affect, subsequently increasing likelihood to take medications, whereas loss-framed attributes led to more negative feelings and increased perceived riskiness of medications. Study 2 found that positive affective contexts indirectly led to an increased likelihood to take medication by increasing positive feelings about the medications. Taken together, leveraging positivity through gain frames and positive contexts could improve adherence to medication plans. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Paths to positivity: the relationship of age differences in appraisals of control to emotional experience.

Evidence suggests that older adults experience greater emotional well-being compared to younger adults. Appraisal theories of emotion posit that differences in emotional experience are the result of differences in appraisal. As such, age differences in appraisal may relate to age differences in emotion. To investigate this, the present study focused on appraisals of control. Research suggests that losses of control lead to greater negative affect. Therefore, older adulthood was predicted to be associated with increased appraisal of self-control and less negative affect. To investigate this idea, we used an emotionally ambiguous scenario paradigm. Older and younger participants read fourteen ambiguous scenarios, imaging themselves as the main character. After each scenario, participants appraised the scenarios on three different control dimensions: self-, other-, and circumstantial-control. Afterward, they rated their feelings toward the scenarios on seven different emotional states. The results showed that compared to younger adults, older adults appraised more self-control relative to other- and circumstantial-control, and also experienced less negative affect in response to the scenarios. Importantly, in a mediation analysis, self-control relative to other-control explained age differences in emotional reactions toward the scenarios. This finding reflects the importance of considering the role of appraisal in age differences in emotional experience.

Doing What Makes You Happy: Health Message Framing for Younger and Older Adults.

Background: Health-related messages, framed in terms of gains or losses, can impact decision-making differently across the adult life span. The focus of this study was on the emotional responses evoked by such framing and their relationship to perceived effectiveness, as mechanisms that may underpin how health messages impact health decisions. Methods: A web-based study using Amazon's Mechanical Turk platform was conducted with a sample of 132 younger adults and 106 older adults. Participants were asked to read exercise-related messages framed in terms of gains or losses, and to rate each message for affect and effectiveness. Results: Relative to younger adults, older adults showed less negative reactions to loss-framed messages and to messages that described undesirable outcomes. Importantly, younger and older adults differentially used affective cues to gauge effectiveness of framed messages: for gain-framed messages (which tended to evoke positive affect), older adults found messages that made them feel good to be more effective; but for loss-framed messages (which tend to evoke negative affect), younger adults found messages that made them feel bad to be more effective. Conclusions: These results suggest that in processing health messages, older adults may be more motivated by positive affect, while younger adults may be more motivated by negative affect.

Affective Working Memory: An Integrative Psychological Construct.

When people ruminate about an unfortunate encounter with a loved one, savor a long-sought accomplishment, or hold in mind feelings from a marvelous or regretfully tragic moment, what mental processes orchestrate these psychological phenomena? Such experiences typify how affect interacts with working memory, which we posit can occur in three primary ways: emotional experiences can modulate working memory, working memory can modulate emotional experiences, and feelings can be the mental representations maintained by working memory. We propose that this last mode constitutes distinct neuropsychological processes that support the integration of particular cognitive and affective processes: affective working memory. Accumulating behavioral and neural evidence suggests that affective working memory processes maintain feelings and are partially separable from their cognitive working memory counterparts. Affective working memory may be important for elucidating the contribution of affect to decision making, preserved emotional processes in later life, and mechanisms of psychological dysfunction in clinical disorders. We review basic behavioral, neuroscience, and clinical research that provides evidence for affective working memory; consider its theoretical implications; and evaluate its functional role within the psychological architecture. In sum, the perspective we advocate is that affective working memory is a fundamental mechanism of mind.

Me Time, or We Time? Age Differences in Motivation for Exercise.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Increasing exercise continues to be an important health issue for both older and younger adults. Researchers have suggested several methods for increasing exercise motivation. Socioemotional selectivity theory (SST) posits that people's motivation shift from future-oriented instrumental goals to present-oriented emotionally meaningful goals as we age, which provides insight into how people's motivations for exercise may differ for older versus younger adults. The aim of our study was to examine how exercise motivation differs for older versus younger adults. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: Older (greater than 59 years old) and younger (aged 18-26 years) adults participated in focus groups. They discussed exercise motivation (or lack thereof), motivators and barriers to exercise, and preferences about when, where, and with whom they exercise. Focus group transcripts were analyzed using direct content analysis and iterative categorization. RESULTS: Consistent with SST, younger adults generally preferred to exercise alone to achieve instrumental fitness goals, whereas older adults preferred to exercise with others. Additionally, older adults tend to consider peripheral others (e.g., strangers, acquaintances), as a positive rather than a negative influence. DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS: SST provides a framework for exploring age-related shifts in exercise motivation. Additionally, the positivity effect was reflected in how older adults evaluated the influence of peripheral others. Motivational messages could be tailored to increase health behavior changes by focusing on instrumental exercise goals for younger adults and exercise focused on meaningful relationships for older adults.

The sure thing: The role of integral affect in risky choice framing.

When faced with a decision, certain aspects of the decision itself shape our affective responses to choice options, which, in turn, influence our choices. These integral affective influences manifest as immediate feelings about choice options as well as the feelings that we anticipate we will feel after certain potential outcomes. We examined whether the effect of framing on risk taking can be explained through the mediating roles of immediate and anticipated affect. Two experiments were conducted using a gambling task. On each trial, participants were endowed a sum of money (e.g., $25) then presented with a choice between a sure option (leaving them with a portion of the initial endowment) and a gamble option (that could result in either keeping or losing the entire endowment). The sure option was framed differently across two within-participant conditions: as a gain (keep $20 from $25) or loss (lose $5 from $25). Experiment 1 examined whether immediate feelings toward choice options explain how framing the sure option as a loss versus a gain increases risk taking. Experiment 2 examined whether immediate and/or anticipated affect explain how framing guides risk taking. We found that the tendency to take risks to avoid sure losses was explained by immediate (not anticipated) affective evaluations of the sure option only. Individuals tended to take more risks when faced with sure losses due to greater negative immediate feelings that were evoked by sure losses relative to sure gains. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Adult age differences in the interpretation of surprised facial expressions.

Research on adult age differences in the interpretation of facial expressions has yet to examine evaluations of surprised faces, which signal that an unexpected and ambiguous event has occurred in the expresser's environment. The present study examined whether older and younger adults differed in their interpretations of the affective valence of surprised faces. Specifically, we examined older and younger participants' evaluations of happy, angry, and surprised facial expressions. We predicted that, on the basis of age-related changes in the processing of emotional information, older adults would evaluate surprised faces more positively than would younger adults. The results indicated that older adults interpreted surprised faces more positively than did their younger counterparts. These findings reveal a novel age-related positivity effect in the interpretation of surprised faces, suggesting that older adults imbue ambiguous facial expressions-that is, expressions that lack either positive or negative facial actions-with positive meaning. (PsycINFO Database Record

Messages that matter: Age differences in affective responses to framed health messages.

Age differences in responses to framed health messages-which can influence judgments and decisions-are critical to understand yet relatively unexplored. Age-related emotional shifts toward positivity would be expected to differentially impact the affective responses of older and younger adults to framed messages. In this study, we measured the subjective and physiological affective responses of older and younger adults to gain- and loss-framed exercise promotion messages. Relative to older adults, younger adults exhibited greater negative reactivity to loss-framed health messages. These results suggest that health message framing does matter, but it depends on the age of the message recipient. (PsycINFO Database Record

The interpretative lenses of older adults are not rose-colored--just less dark: Aging and the interpretation of ambiguous scenarios.

We are all faced with ambiguous situations daily that we must interpret to make sense of the world. In such situations, do you wear rose-colored glasses and fill in blanks with positives, or do you wear dark glasses and fill in blanks with negatives? In the current study, we presented 32 older and 32 younger adults with a series of ambiguous scenarios and had them continue the stories. Older adults continued the scenarios with less negativity than younger adults, as measured by negative and positive emotion word use and by the coded overall emotional valence of each interpretation. These results illuminate an interpretative approach by older adults that favors less negative endings and that supports broader age-related positivity. In addition, older adults interpreted social scenarios with less emotionality than did younger adults. These findings uncover a new manifestation of age-related positivity in spontaneous speech generated in response to ambiguity, indicating that older adults tend to create emotional meaning differently from the young.