Seniors control emotions better than young adults

A new study just published in the journal, Psychology and Aging, finds that with age comes the ability to better regulate emotions in order to not disrupt performance on a memory-intensive task.

The research study found that regulating emotions, such as reducing negative emotions or inhibiting unwanted thoughts, is a resource-demanding process that disrupts the ability of younger adults to simultaneously or subsequently perform tasks.
 
“This study is among the first to demonstrate that the costs of emotion regulation vary across age groups,” said Fredda Blanchard-Fields, chair of Georgia Tech’s School of Psychology and the study’s lead author.
 
The study, which included 72 young adults who were 20 to 30 years old and 72 adults who were 60 to 75 years old, was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

It was conducted by Susanne Scheibe, a former postdoctoral fellow at Georgia Tech, currently at Stanford University and Ms Blanchard-Fields.
 
For the investigation, three quarters of the participants watched a two-minute Fear Factor television series clip depicting a woman eating something revolting in order to win money.

The video was intended to induce a feeling of disgust in the participants. The remaining participants comprising the control group watched a two-minute clip of two men talking about a woman’s dress and subsequently sharing a beer in silence that was not intended to induce emotions.
 
The study showed that all of the participants performed better at the working memory task after watching the clip than before, likely due to the learning process.

However, after being told to turn their disgust into positive feelings, the young adults performed significantly worse than the older adults in the memory task.

Older adults who were given the same instructions continued to improve at the memory task.
 
“Negative emotions can be toxic and disrupt one’s balance in life, so the ability of older adults to regulate negative emotions serves to enhance their quality of life,” noted Ms Blanchard-Fields.

“Older adults are so efficient at dealing with their emotions that it doesn’t cost them any decrease in performance, which is a really positive thing.”
 
Future studies should also be conducted to determine exactly how older adults achieved the same emotion-regulatory goal with less cognitive effort.
 
“The amount of resources necessary for older adults to maintain or regain emotional well-being, while performing well at other tasks might be less because they have a wealth of past experience in regulating their emotions – they’ve been doing it for a long time,” said Ms Blanchard-Fields.

“On the other hand, younger adults don’t tend to regulate their emotions, so it takes effort, which draws away resources so that they don’t perform as well on tasks.”