ABSTRACT
The following chapter provides an overview of the literature on age-related differences in emotion regulation dynamics, particularly with respect to anticipatory, reactivity, and recovery processes. Anticipatory emotion regulation occurs as people think about upcoming perceived stressors, whereas reactivity and recovery processes involve emotion regulation during or after a stressor. Older age is generally related to lower anticipatory stress. Adolescents generally exhibit greater emotional reactivity than children and older adults. In studies of adult age differences, the literature is mixed as to whether older age is related to less or greater reactivity and slower recovery, but these discrepancies may be explained, in part, by individual differences in ruminative processes. Older adults who ruminate or perseverate on past stressors show slower recovery than their younger counterparts who also ruminate. We also discuss unresolved questions and future directions in this literature, such as methodological and measurement issues in emotion regulation dynamics, distinguishing between automatic and intentional emotion regulation, and understanding emotion regulation dynamics using a multidimensional approach.
