Emotion regulation in old and very old age

Kunzmann, Katzorreck, Wieck, Schilling, Lücke & Gerstorf (2022) published “Emotion Regulation in Old and Very Old Age” in Emotion. I like this study because it uses multiple measures and contrasts the young old (averaging 66 years) and the very old (averaging 86 years). As more seniors live well into their 80s and 90s, it makes sense to study them. Here’s the abstract:

Prominent life span theories have suggested that the ability to downregulate negative emotions remains stable or even increases well into old age. However, past evidence for continued growth during old age is mixed. In this laboratory study, 130 young old individuals (Mage = 66.72 years, SD = 1.03, range = 65 to 69 years, 48% female) and 59 very old individuals (Mage = 86.03 years, SD = 1.44, range = 83 to 89 years, 58% female) watched negative emotion evoking film clips under different emotion regulation instructions. Subjective feelings, cardiovascular reactions, and facial behavioral expressions were assessed in response to each film. Emotion regulation competence was operationalized as difference in the intensity of negative emotions during a trial with no regulation instruction versus three trials with regulation instruction, asking participants to engage in detached reappraisal, behavioral suppression, or positive reappraisal. In comparison to young old individuals, very old individuals were less able to regulate their self-reported negative feelings. These age-related deficits were partly associated with age differences in fluid cognitive abilities. Notably, however, emotion regulation deficits in very old individuals observed in self-reports of emotions were not evident at the levels of cardiovascular arousal and facial expressivity. Together this evidence speaks against one-sided views on emotional aging as uniform process of either growth or decline, even in old and very old age. 

It is not at all surprising that age differences in fluid cognitive abilities are partly in play here. As someone who grew up in a large extended family with many who lived into their 80s and 90s, I also think it makes sense that the very old are less able to regulate their negative feelings and that their deficits do not simply relate to cardiovascular arousal and facial expressions. This work also makes it clear that practitioners will need to proceed with flexibility as they diagnose and treat seniors.