11/14 Flashcards
Global well being:
How happy are you with your life in general?
)Hedonic well-being
measured by Satisfaction with life scale
Subjective hedonic well being associated with
High life satisfaction
High positive affect/emotion
Low negative affect/emotion
Satisfaction with life scale
most widely used self report measure of hedonic well being
Eudaimonic well-being
Speaks to our sense of purpose and meaning in life
measured using meaning in life questionnaire
Correlation between hedonic well being and eudaimonic well being is
very high (0.7)
daily diaries
attempt to gather data in real time
Stone et al (2010)
Examined emotional well being among 350k participants through poll
Included 2 measures:
1)Global well being:
Assessed using Global well being ladder (1-10 point scale)
2)Hedonic well being
Researchers found that child raising impacts emotional well being negatively
Global well being as a function of age
Steep decline in young adulthood, slight increase in mid 20’s, then declines in mid 30’s
Steep incline from 50 years old to later
Enjoyment and happiness as function of age
Similar findings in enjoyment and happiness
U-shaped curve
Decline tends to reach its minimum in mid life around 50
Controlling for confounds for enjoyment and age or happiness and age
Examination of negative affect: Stress, worry, anger, and sadness
Sadness tends to stay the same across life span
Sadness continues to serve an important function across life
We derive benefits from sadness, and inevitable
examination of stress,worry, anger, and sadness
Huge peak of stress, worry, anger, and sadness in early adulthood, then a very steep decline of stress over lifespan
Blanchflower and Oswald (2008)
Observed trends similar to stone et al (2010); global well-being and hedonic well-being at the lowest in middle age
Further research has demonstrated that symptoms of anxiety and depression, anxiety disorders, and major depressive disorder decrease in older adulthood
How does emotion regulation change with age?
researchers have documented as age related positivity effect, that is, age related increase in the preference for positive over negative information in attention and memory
Isaacowtiz et al
Presented participants with emotional stimuli: synthetic (fakes) faces that expressed anger, sadness, fear, and happy
Younger adults spent more time looking at angry face, older adults spent more time looking at neutral face
Younger adults spent more time looking at fear face, older adults spent more time looking at neutral faces
Younger adults are far more likely than older adults to focus on negative emotional expression
older adults and Attention
older individuals tend to have selective attention on positive things
Study: Examined viewing time of younger and older adults for positive and negative car option features
Asked them to consider 6 different cars on different car features
Participants were asked to choose the best car available
Conclusion:
Both younger and older adults spent more time looking at positive features as opposed to negative features of the cars
Older adults had a larger difference in the time spent looking at positive features over negative features compared to younger adults
Older adults spent more time looking at positive features than negative features compared to younger adults
Memory:positivity effect in older adults
Lab based study: examined recall of positive, negative, and neutral images among younger, middle-aged, and older adults
Young adults: recall for positive and negative images was the same, but higher than neutral image
Middle aged: slightly better recall for pos over neg images, both pos and neg image remembered more than neutral images
Old age: recall of positive images being substantially greater than neg images, difference between negative and neutral images is relatively small
Gap between number of positive images over negative images increases with age
Memory (kennedy): studied autobiographical memories related to experiences 14 years earlier among younger and older adults
In younger participants:
autobiographical memories were more negative than actual ratings 14 years earlier
Current them thought they had more negative symptoms than they actually had
In older participants:
autobiographical memories were more positive than actual ratings 14 years earlier
Reported better health, lower levels of depression, higher level of happiness than what was the actual case 14 years earlier
A meta analysis of 100 studies on attention, memory, and age revealed (reed et al 2014):
Looked at positive and negative affect
A moderate positivity effect in older adults: d under unconstrained conditions=.48
A small negativity effect in younger adults; d under unconstrained conditions=-.20
Attentional deployment
Attend to positive aspects of situation (positivity effect)
Older adults > younger adults
Situation selection
Avoid situations that provoke negative emotion
Older adults > younger adults
Situation modification
Change situations that provoke negative emotion
Younger adults > older adults (seek to preserve interpersonal harmony)
Cognitive change
Reframe situations to reflect positive appraisals
Older adults> younger adults
Response modulation
Suppress or conceal expression of negative emotion
Younger adults > older adults (associated with reduced positive emotion and increased negative emotion)
Older adults are not passive in emotional regulation, they are constructing emotional realities that are more positive in nature, active in positive processes either unconscious or consciously
Research suggest that two brain regions associated with age related change in emotion:
1)Prefrontal cortex
Shrinkage with age; increased activation in response to negative stimuli with age
2)amygdala(emotional responses)
Minimal shrinkage with age; reduced activation in response to negative stimuli with age
Amygdala very reactive to fear and pain
what is important about prefrontal cortex and amygdala
It is the interaction between amygdala and prefrontal cortex that is important: as we get older, our prefrontal cortex becomes increasingly active to negative stimuli, therefore the prefrontal cortex is working harder to reduce the reaction of amygdala to negative stimuli
Socioemotional selectivity theory:
in the face of distinct time horizons, younger adults and older adults pursue different goals
according to socioemotional selectivity theory what do young adults percieve
Perceive an open ended time horizon: young people are not thinking about impending death, they have much time ahead of them
Future orientated; pursue information seeking-goals
Seek experiences that facilitate knowledge acquisition;novelty is valued and investments are made in expanding horizons
Associated with greater frequency of negative emotion (anxiety, sadness)
Older adults:
Limited time horizon: time is running out
Present oriented; pursue emotionally meaningful goals
Seek experiences that are emotionally gratifying; emotional fulfillment is valued and investments are made in emotion regulation (increasing positive emotion, decrease neg emotion)
Associated with greater frequency of positive emotion(happiness, contentment)
conclusion of socioemotional selectivity theory
Our goals shift from information seeking goals become less prominent and emotional meaningful goals become more prominent
Older adults reflect top down processing motivational processes and not fixed declines in cognitive or neural capacity, they are malleable and require cognitive resources to pursue
