Do the Emotional Benefits of Optimism Vary Across Older Adulthood? A Life Span Perspective.

This study examined whether the emotional benefits of dispositional optimism for managing stressful encounters decrease across older adulthood. Such an effect might emerge because age-related declines in opportunities for overcoming stressors could reduce the effectiveness of optimism. This hypothesis was tested in a 6-year longitudinal study of 171 community-dwelling older adults (age range = 64-90 years). Hierarchical linear models showed that dispositional optimism protected relatively young participants from exhibiting elevations in depressive symptoms over time, but that these benefits became increasingly reduced among their older counterparts. Moreover, the findings showed that an age-related association between optimism and depressive symptoms was observed particularly during periods of enhanced, as compared to reduced, stress. These results suggest that dispositional optimism protects emotional well-being during the early phases of older adulthood, but that its effects are reduced in advanced old age.

Associations between dispositional optimism and diurnal cortisol in a community sample: when stress is perceived as higher than normal.

OBJECTIVES: This study examined whether dispositional optimism would be associated with reduced levels of cortisol secretion among individuals who perceive stress levels that are either higher than their normal average (i.e., within-person associations) or higher than the stress levels of other individuals (i.e., between-person associations). METHODS: Stress perceptions and four indicators of diurnal cortisol (area-under-the-curve, awakening, afternoon/evening, and cortisol awakening response [CAR] levels) were assessed on 12 different days over 6 years in a sample of 135 community-dwelling older adults. RESULTS: Hierarchical linear models showed that although pessimists secreted relatively elevated area-under-the-curve, awakening, and afternoon/evening levels of cortisol (but not CAR) on days they perceived stress levels that were higher than their normal average, optimists were protected from these stress-related elevations in cortisol. However, when absolute stress levels were compared across participants, there was only a significant effect for predicting CAR (but not the other cortisol measures), indicating that optimism was associated particularly strongly with a reduced CAR among participants who experienced high levels of stress. CONCLUSIONS: Dispositional optimism can buffer the association between stress perceptions and elevated levels of diurnal cortisol when individuals perceive higher-than-normal levels of stress, and it may predict a reduced CAR among individuals who generally perceive high stress levels. Research should examine relative, in addition to absolute, levels of stress to identify the personality factors that help individuals adjust to psychological perceptions of stress.

I'm better off than most other people: the role of social comparisons for coping with regret in young adulthood and old age.

This longitudinal study was designed to examine the importance of social comparisons for coping with regret among young and older adults. It was expected that making downward social comparisons would be associated with a greater reduction in regret intensity over time among older, compared with young, adults. A total of 104 participants took part in this 4-month longitudinal study. The findings suggest that across different comparison targets, making downward (relative to upward) social comparisons was consistently related to reduced regret intensity over time among older adults. Among young adults, making downward social comparisons with personally known others, as opposed to age peers, was associated with lower regret intensity. In addition, older adults increased their reliance on downward social comparisons over time. This age-differential shift toward downward social comparisons further explained age differences in changes of regret intensity over time. Finally, differences in opportunities to undo regrets explained some of the age differences in the use and adaptive value of downward social comparisons. The implications of the findings for understanding and examining pathways to successful development are discussed.