ABSTRACT
The study of aging is often the study of decline. Yet emotional experience is often spared, and sometimes even improves, across young and middle adulthood and into old age. The current chapter overviews research documenting and explaining these age differences. The majority of this research is based on one-time questionnaires and finds that after adjusting for health problems, older age is often related to higher overall levels of emotional well-being. In addition, a smaller group of laboratory-based and daily sampling studies have attempted to capture the dynamic unfolding of emotional experience. By documenting temporal sequences of emotions, researchers gain insight into active regulation efforts as opposed to overall emotional states. These studies yield more mixed results, such that older age is related to higher levels of well-being when time since an arousing event has passed, but not always when people are actively regulating their emotions in response to an eliciting event. The chapter uses socioemotional selectivity theory and Strength and Vulnerability Integration (SAVI) to explain why age differences vary based on when emotional experience is assessed—either before, during, or after exposure to an emotion-eliciting event.
