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Emotion Regulation in Older Adults

Isabelle Goral

Concordia University

PSYC 434/01: Aging

Dr. Karen Li

April 5th, 2023

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Emotions are an aspect of life that everyone needs to learn how to manage. Given that

each individual is different, people come up with their own ways of handling their feelings.

Gross (1998) proposed an emotion regulation model that summed up the methods that people use

to face emotional situations in order to identify and understand them. He pointed out that there

are five existing strategies to manage emotions, along with tactics used to apply these strategies

in specific situations. Multiple studies on emotion regulation used these same strategies in their

research in order to identify how different age groups handle their emotions. One study which

was particularly interested in older adults wanted to see which tactics this specific age group

used (Wolfe et al., 2022). This article led to many questions regarding emotion regulation in

senior citizens including which methods are used and preferred by older adults? Are older adults

better at managing their emotions? What are the effects of these strategies on their mental health

along with their well-being? The answers to these questions have been found throughout

extensive literature and are discussed below.

The five strategies proposed by Gross (1998) are the following: situation selection,

situation modification, attentional deployment, cognitive change, and response modulation.

Situation selection consists of either facing or avoiding a situation depending on the feelings

people believe they will acquire once in the situation. Situation modification is when individuals

alter parts of a situation in order to change their feelings about it. Attentional deployment occurs

when people chose to focus or to remove their attention from parts of a situation that will evoke

feelings. Cognitive change happens when individuals change their way of thinking in order to

modify their feelings about a situation. Response modulation is a response mechanism that deals

directly with the emotional experience while it is taking place as opposed to the other four

strategies that are applied before the emotional experience happens.

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The research on emotion regulation in older adults suggests that in situation selection,

situation modification, and attentional deployment, individuals use the two following tactics:

introducing or increasing positive stimuli and avoiding or decreasing negative stimuli

(Livingstone & Isaacowitz, 2019; Wolfe et al., 2022; Isaacowitz et al., 2009; Schirda et al.,2016).

As the names suggest, these tactics imply adding focus on positive aspects and removing focus

from negative aspects in order to regulate their emotions. Additional research has supported this

claim by demonstrating that older adults prefer smiling and neutral faces over sad and angry

faces (Isaacowitz et al., 2009; Schirda et al., 2016). These two tactics were also found to be the

ones preferred by this age group. The results of these studies were discovered by using eye-

tracking methods in order to locate the areas that participants spent more or less time looking at

(Isaacowitz et al., 2009; Wolfe et al., 2022; Schirda et al.,2016; Livingstone & Isaacowitz, 2019).

Although increasing positive stimuli and decreasing negative stimuli are favored by older

adults, research suggests that this age group tends to adopt reappraisal and suppression more

often as well as making more use of these specific tactics in their lives (Benson et al., 2019;

Livingstone & Isaacowitz, 2019; Birditt et al., 2005; Brummer et al., 2014; Prakash et al., 2017;

Scheibe et al., 2015; Smith et al., 2021; Blanchard-Fields et al., 1995; Yeung et al., 2011).

Reappraisal and suppression are expressions of cognitive change and reappraisal respectively,

and as many studies also suggest, they are the two strategies that are most frequently found in

social situations (Smith et al., 2021; Benson et al., 2019; Birditt et al., 2005; Brummer et al.,

2014). When breaking down these social situations into further details, research shows that

emotional context and closeness of the relationship also play a role in the strategies that older

adults will choose to adopt. Different strategies will be used in different contexts regarding

relationships, but it is shown that older adults tend to use suppression more frequently with
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people they care more about (Benson et al., 2019; Schirda et al., 2016). As for emotional context,

studies show that older adults seem to prefer using reappraisal in low-intensity emotional

situations (Scheibe et al., 2015; Blanchard-Fields et al., 1995), but favor suppression for high-

intensity emotional situations (Schirda et al., 2016; Scheibe et al., 2015; Blanchard-Fields et al.,

1995). Using reappraisal and suppression regularly during social interactions implies that older

adults are making use of passive strategies to regulate their emotions. Luckily, the employment

of passive strategies results in positive consequences for this age group including being less

likely to argue (Birditt et al., 2005; Blanchard-Fields et al., 1995; Schirda et al., 2016), and being

more likely to solve their conflicts (Birditt et al., 2005). The present literature demonstrates that

overall, older adults use more emotion-focused strategies to regulate their emotions by adopting

primarily the tactics of suppression and reappraisal (Blanchard-Fields et al., 1995; Yeung et al.,

2011). The methods that were most commonly used by researchers in order to acquire the results

of these studies were surveys and questionnaires (Benson et al., 2019; Birditt et al., 2005;

Brummer et al., 2014).

Suppression and reappraisal also happen to be the two tactics that are further beneficial to

older adults in order to help them regulate their emotions more efficiently (Prakash et al., 2017;

Yeung et al., 2011). Using both of these tactics has led individuals from this age category to

experience less negative and more positive emotions overall (Smith et al., 2021; Birditt et al.,

2005; Gross et al., 1997; Yeung et al., 2011). When speaking of decreasing negative emotions,

studies have found that this reduction is more specifically related to older adults feeling anger

less frequently and the increase in positive emotions is related to feeling happiness more

frequently (Gross et al., 1997; Schirda et al., 2016; Birditt et al., 2005). Research further suggests

that although suppression and reappraisal both help this age group excel at regulating their
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emotions, older adults seem to be better at managing their feelings overall (Prakash et al., 2017;

Bal & Smit, 2012; Gross et al., 1997). This age group is not only better at regulating their

emotions but they are also further skilled at regulating their desires along with having a lower

intensity of emotional impulses (Burr et al., 2021; Gross et al., 1997). Studies supporting these

claims believe that this is not only due to the natural process of aging (Prakash et al., 2017;

Yeung et al., 2011), but also due to older adults being generally more emotionally conscious as

well as having more wisdom as a result of their mature age (Bal & Smit, 2012; Blanchard-Fields

et al., 1995). Lastly, aging has also been shown to help eliminate emotion regulation strategies

that are not beneficial to older adults which is why they make less use of maladaptive strategies

and make more use of acceptance (Schirda et al., 2016).

Research also points out that using suppression and reappraisal leads to better well-being

and better mental health in this age category (Smith et al., 2021). In fact, Smith et al. (2021) have

found that the continuous use of reappraisal will not only help these individuals maintain better

mental health for the time being but in the long term as well. This tactic also seems to be

beneficial for older adults to maintain positive affect, along with encouraging their well-being

(Yeung et al., 2011; Burr et al., 2021). Likewise, other researchers have supported suppression to

be an alternative tactic in order to aid older adults to maintain better affect (Scheibe et al., 2015).

Additionally, suppression seems to be useful for this age group by helping them acquire better

mindfulness which in turn leads to better mental health (Prakash et al., 2017). This tactic has also

been shown to aid older adults to experience less anxiety and therefore results in better well-

being (Brummer et al., 2014). Despite these two tactics helping older adults maintain better

mental health, it seems that the process of aging itself also allows senior citizens to have better

emotional health due to this factor improving as individuals get older (Burr et al., 2021). The
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process of aging can also be related to older adults adopting more meaningful goals in life

(Yeung et al., 2011), more specifically related to having better well-being, which is why these

individuals make more use of reappraisal and suppression as well as avoiding negative stimuli

and focusing on positive stimuli (Livingstone & Isaacowitz, 2019; Blanchard-Fields et al., 1995;

Yeung et al., 2011).

In conclusion, older adults seem to be better at regulating their emotions overall. This age

group prefers to employ the tactics of increasing positive stimuli and decreasing negative stimuli

for situation selection, situation modification, and attentional deployment. However, reappraisal

and suppression are more frequently used by these individuals. These two tactics also happen to

be beneficial to older adults by helping them regulate their emotions along with aiding this age

group to acquire better mental health. Furthermore, the methods presented by Gross (1998) to

regulate emotions are all based on internal and mental aspects of how a person views an

emotional situation. Future research may be interested in looking at the external factors that

could potentially influence the emotional regulation of older adults (i.e., going for a walk,

listening to music, drawing). Researchers may also want to look at which factors are used, as

well as to what extent in different social contexts and in the closeness of the relationship. It is

known that reaching out to someone to discuss personal issues may be beneficial for emotional

health as well. An interesting question that future studies could implicate is: “Are older adults

more likely to open up to someone about their feelings?” or “Does aging encourage older adults

to open up more about their feelings?”. Researchers could also take a closer look at whom older

adults are more comfortable opening up to and for what type of situation. Studies may also want

to take into consideration gender as a factor as there seems to be a discrepancy between men and

women when it comes to talking about situations they are going through.
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References

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