Emotional experience in everyday life across the adult life span.

TLDR

Socioemotional selectivity theory provides the theoretical backdrop for interpreting the results. The study examined how age influences the frequency, intensity, complexity, and consistency of everyday emotional experience across adulthood. Eighty‑four adults aged 18 to 94 completed a one‑week experience‑sampling protocol that recorded their emotions. Positive emotional frequency was unrelated to age, whereas negative emotions followed a curvilinear decline until about age 60 and then plateaued; older adults also showed more differentiated emotional experience, with highly positive episodes lasting longer and highly negative episodes being less stable.

Abstract

Age differences in emotional experience over the adult life span were explored, focusing on the frequency, intensity, complexity, and consistency of emotional experience in everyday life. One hundred eighty-four people, age 18 to 94 years, participated in an experience-sampling procedure in which emotions were recorded across a 1-week period. Age was unrelated to frequency of positive emotional experience. A curvilinear relationship best characterized negative emotional experience. Negative emotions declined in frequency until approximately age 60, at which point the decline ceased. Individual factor analyses computed for each participant revealed that age was associated with more differentiated emotional experience. In addition, periods of highly positive emotional experience were more likely to endure among older people and periods of highly negative emotional experience were less stable. Findings are interpreted within the theoretical framework of socioemotional selectivity theory.