Institute of Psychology I, University of Leipzig, Leipzig, Germany.
Psychol Aging. 2009 Dec;24(4):879-89. doi: 10.1037/a0017347.
Previously, we found that during films about age-typical losses, older adults experienced greater sadness than young adults, whereas their physiological responses were just as large. In the present study, our goal was to replicate this finding and extend past work by examining the role of cognitive functioning in age differences in emotional reactivity. We measured the autonomic and subjective responses of 240 adults (age range=20 to 70) while they viewed films about age-typical losses from our previous work. Findings were fully supportive of our past work: The magnitude of subjective reactions to our films increased linearly over the adult years, whereas there were no age differences on the level of physiological reactivity. We also found that the subjective reactions of adults with high pragmatic intelligence were of moderate size independent of their own age or the age relevance of the emotion elicitor. In contrast, the subjective reactions of adults low on pragmatic intelligence were more variable. Together, this evidence suggests that research on age differences in emotional reactivity may benefit from a perspective that considers individual difference variables as well as contextual variations.
先前，我们发现观看有关典型年龄损失的影片时，老年人比年轻人感到更悲伤，而他们的生理反应却一样大。在本研究中，我们的目标是复制这一发现，并通过考察认知功能在情绪反应的年龄差异中的作用来扩展过去的研究。我们测量了 240 名成年人（年龄范围为 20 至 70 岁）在观看我们之前研究中有关典型年龄损失的影片时的自主和主观反应。研究结果完全支持我们过去的研究：对我们影片的主观反应的大小在成年期呈线性增加，而生理反应水平上没有年龄差异。我们还发现，具有高实用智能的成年人的主观反应适中，与其自身年龄或情感引发因素的年龄相关性无关。相比之下，实用智能较低的成年人的主观反应则更为多变。总的来说，这一证据表明，情绪反应的年龄差异研究可能受益于考虑个体差异变量以及情境变化的视角。
