Regulating emotion expression and regulating emotion experience: divergent associations with dimensions of attachment among older women

Abstract

Adult attachment research does not systematically distinguish between experiential and expressive forms of regulation. Drawing insights from developmental-functionalism – a lifespan theory of emotion and emotion regulation – the current report examined the relations among attachment, trait emotion, and expressive emotion regulation in a large (N = 1204) sample of older women. Although both preoccupation and fearful-avoidance predicted more anxiety and anger, preoccupation predicted greater fear withdrawal and less fear expression, while fearful-avoidance predicted greater fear expression and greater anger withdrawal; attachment security predicted less fear withdrawal and less anger expression. Importantly, results regarding expressive regulation held even when controlling for trait levels of the underlying emotion. Results are interpreted within the context of models of attachment and lifespan socioemotional functioning. It is suggested that attachment research may benefit from considering the distinct functions of experienced versus expressed emotion in developmentally diverse contexts. Limitations are discussed and directions for future research are given.

Keywords:

• attachment
• older adult
• later life
• emotion
• emotion regulation
• developmental functionalism

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by funding from the National Institutes of Health General Medical Science (2SO6 GM54650) and the National Cancer Institute (1P20 CA 91372). The authors are grateful to Dr. Howard Steele and two anonymous reviewers for their comments.