Three facets of emotion regulation in old and very old age: Strategy use, effectiveness, and variability.

Abstract

The ability to regulate emotions in stressful situations is an important building block for high well-being across the lifespan. Yet, very little is known about how old and very old adults regulate their emotions. In this study, 123 young old adults (Mage = 67.18, SD = 0.94) and 47 very old adults (Mage = 86.70, SD = 1.46) were prompted 6 times a day for 7 consecutive days to report both their stressors and 10 emotion regulation strategies. Overall, there was little indication of age differences in the use of emotion regulation strategies during exposure to stressors, but very old, as compared with young old, individuals used three of the 10 strategies considered here more intensively. The 10 emotion regulation strategies were similarly effective across age groups based on their association with perceived overall emotion regulation success. We also did not find age group differences in within-strategy variability, defined as the variation in using a given strategy across stressor situations. By contrast, between-strategy variability, defined as the selective use of fewer rather than many strategies across stressor situations, was lower for very old participants. Only between-strategy, and not within-strategy, variability contributed to overall emotion regulation success. There was no age group difference in this regard. Taken together, the evidence suggests small age differences in emotion regulation if at all. This is noteworthy given the advanced age of the very old subsample in this study and the deficits in multiple domains of functioning reported in the literature for this advanced age. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).