Age-related differences in emotional reactivity, regulation, and rejection sensitivity in adolescence.

TLDR

Adolescents are thought to experience more turbulent emotions than adults, but it is unclear whether this stems from developmental changes in emotional reactivity or regulation. The study aimed to determine whether age differences in emotional reactivity or regulation underlie adolescents’ heightened emotional turbulence. To test this, healthy participants aged 10–23 viewed negative and neutral pictures and were asked to respond naturally or use cognitive reappraisal on a trial‑by‑trial basis. Age influenced regulation success in both linear and quadratic ways but did not affect emotional reactivity; younger adolescents were less successful at regulating responses to social stimuli, especially when high in rejection sensitivity, and these effects varied with stimulus type, underscoring the importance of incorporating emotion regulation into developmental models.

Abstract

Although adolescents' emotional lives are thought to be more turbulent than those of adults, it is unknown whether this difference is attributable to developmental changes in emotional reactivity or emotion regulation. Study 1 addressed this question by presenting healthy individuals aged 10-23 with negative and neutral pictures and asking them to respond naturally or use cognitive reappraisal to down-regulate their responses on a trial-by-trial basis. Results indicated that age exerted both linear and quadratic effects on regulation success but was unrelated to emotional reactivity. Study 2 replicated and extended these findings using a different reappraisal task and further showed that situational (i.e., social vs. nonsocial stimuli) and dispositional (i.e., level of rejection sensitivity) social factors interacted with age to predict regulation success: young adolescents were less successful at regulating responses to social than to nonsocial stimuli, particularly if the adolescents were high in rejection sensitivity. Taken together, these results have important implications for the inclusion of emotion regulation in models of emotional and cognitive development.