Older and younger adult definitions of emotion terms: a mixed-method content analysis

Abstract

Objectives

Conceptualizations of emotions might evolve over the course of adult development as motivations shift, but there are gaps in knowledge regarding these changes. This mixed-methods study tested theoretical predictions pertaining to age group differences in conceptualizations of emotions.

Method

University students (N = 210, M age = 20.1 years) and community-dwelling older adults (N = 90, M age = 72.5 years) participated in three survey studies (2016-2018) conducted in person, online, or via mail and provided written narrative definitions for 11 emotion words. Responses were coded for valence, arousal, time frame, reference to self, reference to social contacts, and nature of response (i.e. example or definition). Code frequencies were compared for younger and older adults via odds ratio and logistic regression analyses.

Results

Younger and older adults used many of the same words in definitions of emotion terms. Older participants more often referenced situational examples in their definitions than younger participants. As expected, older adults used more low arousal language, referenced the ‘self,’ and included other persons more in their emotion descriptions than younger persons. Unexpectedly, younger participants used more positive language in descriptions of some positive emotions.

Conclusions

Descriptions of emotion terms might serve a self-regulatory function, such as to facilitate low arousal emotion experiences for older adults or to illustrate important values, such as the greater importance of other persons to emotion experiences for older than younger adults.

Keywords:

• Emotion
• aging
• valence
• arousal
• mixed-methods

Acknowledgements

We sincerely thank Cara Ackerman, Olivia Bertolino, Tanisha Exantus, Emily Ko, and Erin Lau for their time, dedication, and outstanding assistance with data collection and data coding. We gratefully thank participants in this study. This research did not receive any grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 More details about development of the coding system are available from the first author.

2 Only words that were used by 5% or more of younger and older adult participants are reported.

3 Nonwhite race groups were judged too small on which to conduct analyses to determine the effect of race on definition word frequency and content.

4 The affective words used mostly commonly in definitions provided by females and males are in Supplementary Tables. Due the small number of sex differences, age group by sex word frequency analyses were not run.