Abstract
Emotional response in aging is typically studied using the dimensional or the discrete models of emotion. Moreover, it is typically studied using subjective or physiological variables but not using both perspectives simultaneously. Additionally, tenderness is neglected in emotion induction procedures with older adults, with the present work being the first to include the study of physiological tenderness using film clips. This study integrated two separate approaches to emotion research, comparing 68 younger and 39 older adults and using a popular set of film clips to induce tenderness, amusement, anger, fear, sadness and disgust emotions. The direction of subjective emotional patterns was evaluated with self-reports and that of physiological emotional patterns was evaluated with a wearable emotion detection system. The findings suggest a dual-process framework between subjective and physiological responses, manifested differently in young and older adults. In terms of arousal, the older adults exhibited higher levels of subjective arousal in negative emotions and tenderness while young adults showed higher levels of physiological arousal in these emotions. These findings yield information on the multidirectionality of positive and negative emotions, corroborating that emotional changes in the adult lifespan appear to be subject to the relevance of the emotion elicitor to each age group.
Highlights
Emotional response in aging is typically studied using the dimensional or the discrete models of emotion
The discriminant analysis (DA) based on the ability to identify the target emotions showed that the young adults correctly classified a higher percentage of all negative emotions [disgust = 94.12, fear = 89.71, anger = 89.71, sadness = 83.82, total = 95.59] than the older adults [disgust = 43.59, fear = 51.28, anger = 33.33, sadness = 66.67, total = 87.18]
The young adults correctly classified a higher percentage of all positive emotions [amusement = 91.18, tenderness = 95.59, total = 89.71] than the older adults [amusement = 38.46, tenderness = 28.21, total = 56.41]
Summary
Emotional response in aging is typically studied using the dimensional or the discrete models of emotion. Much work has been done to establish different theories to explain emotional aging Emotional theories such as the Socioemotional Selectivity Theory Seider et al.[10] found that, on both self-report and physiological measures, older participants showed higher levels in response to clips eliciting sadness In this sense, some authors have suggested that emotion regulation might be more difficult in response to higher-intensity s timuli[15], while others have found no differences in emotional experience between young and older a dults[16]. The literature recommends using different means to determine the effectiveness of the MIP in inducing the expected emotions[21,22,23,24], empirical evidence for the association and coherence between the subjective and physiological emotional response in older adults is scarce and inconsistent[25]
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