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More Positive or Less Negative? Emotional Goals and Emotion Regulation Tactics in Adulthood and Old Age.

OBJECTIVES
Despite declines in physical and cognitive functioning, older adults report higher levels of emotional well-being (Charles & Carstensen, 2010). Motivational accounts suggest that differences in goals lead to age-related differences in affect through differences in emotion regulation behaviors, but evidence for age differences in emotion regulation strategy use is inconsistent. Emotion regulation tactics (i.e., how a strategy is implemented) may reveal greater age differences. Specifically, this study tested whether older adults rely more on positivity-seeking or negativity-avoidance tactics and whether goals alter tactic use.


METHOD
An adult lifespan sample (ages 18-90, N = 211) completed three different emotion regulation tasks while being assigned to one of four goal conditions: just view, information-seeking, increase-positive, or decrease-negative. Three tactics were measured- positivity-seeking, negativity-avoidance, and negativity-seeking- by comparing time spent engaging with positive, negative, and neutral stimuli.


RESULTS
Goal instructions only influenced tactic use and affective outcomes in some instances. Instead, younger adults tended to consistently prefer positivity-seeking tactics and older adults preferred negativity-avoidance tactics.


DISCUSSION
Older age may be characterized more by an avoidance of negativity than engagement with positivity; manipulation of goals may not modify these age-related tendencies.