Schryer Emily, Ross Michael, St Jacques Peggy, Levine Brian, Fernandes Myra
Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
Exp Aging Res. 2012;38(4):345-69. doi: 10.1080/0361073X.2012.699364.
BACKGROUND/STUDY CONTEXT: According to the socioemotional selectivity theory (SST; Mather & Carstensen, 2003, Psychological Sciences, 14, 409-415), aging is associated with greater motivation to regulate emotions. The authors propose that the language people use to describe personal memories provides an index of age differences in emotional self-regulation.
In the present article, the authors reanalyzed three previously published studies in which older (aged 60-88) and younger (aged 17-33) participants described emotional and neutral memories from their recent and distant pasts. The authors analyzed the language of the memories using Pennebaker, Booth, and Francis's (2007) Linguistic Inquiry Word Count program (Austin, TX: LIWC Inc.), which calculates the percentage of positive and negative emotion words.
In Studies 1 and 2, older adults used more positive emotion words than did younger adults to describe their autobiographical memories from the recent past, particularly when these were of a neutral valence. In Study 3, older adults used more positive emotion words when describing more recent memories (from the past 5 years) but not when describing distant childhood or adolescent memories.
The authors suggest that these age differences in emotional expressivity support SST, and represent an as-yet unreported age difference that may stem from differences in motivation to regulate emotion.
背景/研究背景：根据社会情绪选择理论（SST；马瑟和卡斯滕森，2003年，《心理科学》，第14卷，第409 - 415页），衰老与更强的情绪调节动机相关。作者提出，人们用于描述个人记忆的语言提供了情绪自我调节中年龄差异的一个指标。
在本文中，作者重新分析了三项先前发表的研究，其中老年（60 - 88岁）和年轻（17 - 33岁）参与者描述了他们近期和遥远过去的情绪性和中性记忆。作者使用彭尼贝克、布斯和弗朗西斯（2007年）的语言调查词频统计程序（得克萨斯州奥斯汀：LIWC公司）分析记忆的语言，该程序计算积极和消极情绪词的百分比。
在研究1和研究2中，老年人在描述他们近期的自传体记忆时比年轻人使用了更多的积极情绪词，特别是当这些记忆具有中性效价时。在研究3中，老年人在描述更近的记忆（过去5年）时使用了更多的积极情绪词，但在描述遥远童年或青少年记忆时并非如此。
作者认为，这些情绪表达上的年龄差异支持了社会情绪选择理论，并代表了一种尚未报道的年龄差异，可能源于情绪调节动机的差异。
