Emotional Coping, Age, and Physical Disorder

Abstract

Traditional ideas suggest that emotional expression is healthy, but empirical support for this position is mixed. Adult subjects participated in a telephone interview to examine the relationships among age, emotional coping (ie, laughter and crying), physical disorder, sex, and income level. Results indicated that cry-coping in women and in low-income participants was associated with increased disorder as age increased. Humor-coping had no relationship to physical disorder across the adult lifespan. These results indicate that emotional weeping does play a role in the prediction of physical disorder, especially in certain groups. In the future, researchers need to concentrate on more subtle physiological effects as well as on the psychological and social consequences of emotional expression.

Index Terms:

• emotions
• weeping
• humor