Interpersonal emotion regulation strategy choice in younger and older adults

ABSTRACT

When managing their emotions, individuals often recruit the help of others; however, most emotion regulation research has focused on self-regulation. Theories of emotion and aging suggest younger and older adults differ in the emotion regulation strategies they use when regulating their own emotions. If how individuals regulate their own emotions and the emotions of others are related, these theorised age differences may also emerge for interpersonal emotion regulation. In two studies, younger and older adults’ intrapersonal and interpersonal emotion regulation strategy choices were examined via self-report and behavioural assessments of regulating the emotions of another participant (Study 1; N = 80) and of a virtual human (Study 2; N = 100). Across both studies, younger adults reported greater intrapersonal suppression but not greater reappraisal. Younger and older adults were generally similar (supported by Bayesian analyses) for both self-reported and behavioural interpersonal emotion regulation strategies. Behavioural interpersonal emotion regulation was not related to self-reported intra- and interpersonal preferences. These results suggest interpersonal emotion regulation in ageing may show distinct patterns from theorised age differences in intrapersonal emotion regulation.

KEYWORDS:

• Interpersonal
• emotion regulation
• older adults
• aging
• emotion

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The stories were recorded from research assistants told to portray emotion as an actor would. Stories were previously normed on valence, arousal, and realism and stories were selected that did not significantly differ between younger and older adults’ ratings on any one of these dimensions.

2 Overall, participants rated the virtual human interaction as “somewhat realistic” (M = 4.63 out of 7, SD = 1.19, on a 1–7 Likert scale ranging from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree” regarding the realism of the virtual interaction.