Sims Tamara, Hogan Candice, Carstensen Laura
Stanford University.
Curr Opin Psychol. 2015 Jun 1;3:80-84. doi: 10.1016/j.copsyc.2015.02.012.
Findings based on studies of daily life consistently associate older ages with relatively positive emotional experience, suggesting that older adults may regulate emotions more effectively than younger adults. Findings from laboratory studies are equivocal, however, with mixed evidence for age-related improvements in use of emotion regulatory strategies. In the current paper, we propose that findings may reflect a failure of laboratory-based experiments to capture the regulatory strategies that older people use in their everyday lives. We argue that the advantages older people have are likely due to antecedent emotion regulation as opposed to response-focused strategies. Understanding the regulatory approaches that older people actually use may inform developmental models of emotion regulation throughout adulthood as well as interventions for improving emotional experience across the life span.
基于对日常生活的研究结果一致表明，年龄较大与相对积极的情绪体验相关联，这表明老年人可能比年轻人更有效地调节情绪。然而，实验室研究的结果并不明确，关于情绪调节策略使用方面与年龄相关的改善存在混合证据。在本文中，我们提出这些结果可能反映了基于实验室的实验未能捕捉到老年人在日常生活中使用的调节策略。我们认为老年人所具有的优势可能归因于先行情绪调节，而非以反应为重点的策略。了解老年人实际使用的调节方法可能会为整个成年期的情绪调节发展模型以及改善一生情绪体验的干预措施提供信息。
