11/14

Question 1

Global well being:

Answer 1

How happy are you with your life in general?

Question 2

)Hedonic well-being

Answer 2

measured by Satisfaction with life scale

Question 3

Subjective hedonic well being associated with

Answer 3

High life satisfaction
High positive affect/emotion
Low negative affect/emotion

Question 4

Satisfaction with life scale

Answer 4

most widely used self report measure of hedonic well being

Question 5

Eudaimonic well-being

Answer 5

Speaks to our sense of purpose and meaning in life

measured using meaning in life questionnaire

Question 6

Correlation between hedonic well being and eudaimonic well being is

Answer 6

very high (0.7)

Question 7

daily diaries

Answer 7

attempt to gather data in real time

Question 8

Stone et al (2010)

Answer 8

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

Question 9

Global well being as a function of age

Answer 9

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

Question 10

Enjoyment and happiness as function of age

Answer 10

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

Question 11

Examination of negative affect: Stress, worry, anger, and sadness

Answer 11

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

Question 12

examination of stress,worry, anger, and sadness

Answer 12

Huge peak of stress, worry, anger, and sadness in early adulthood, then a very steep decline of stress over lifespan

Question 13

Blanchflower and Oswald (2008)

Answer 13

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

Question 14

How does emotion regulation change with age?

Answer 14

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

Question 15

Isaacowtiz et al

Answer 15

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

Question 16

older adults and Attention

Answer 16

older individuals tend to have selective attention on positive things

Question 17

Study: Examined viewing time of younger and older adults for positive and negative car option features

Answer 17

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

Question 18

Memory:positivity effect in older adults

Lab based study: examined recall of positive, negative, and neutral images among younger, middle-aged, and older adults

Answer 18

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

Question 19

Memory (kennedy): studied autobiographical memories related to experiences 14 years earlier among younger and older adults

Answer 19

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

Question 20

A meta analysis of 100 studies on attention, memory, and age revealed (reed et al 2014):

Looked at positive and negative affect

Answer 20

A moderate positivity effect in older adults: d under unconstrained conditions=.48

A small negativity effect in younger adults; d under unconstrained conditions=-.20

Question 21

Attentional deployment

Answer 21

Attend to positive aspects of situation (positivity effect)

Older adults > younger adults

Question 22

Situation selection

Answer 22

Avoid situations that provoke negative emotion

Older adults > younger adults

Question 23

Situation modification

Answer 23

Change situations that provoke negative emotion

Younger adults > older adults (seek to preserve interpersonal harmony)

Question 24

Cognitive change

Answer 24

Reframe situations to reflect positive appraisals

Older adults> younger adults

Question 25

Response modulation

Answer 25

Suppress or conceal expression of negative emotion

Younger adults > older adults (associated with reduced positive emotion and increased negative emotion)

Question 26

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

Question 27

Research suggest that two brain regions associated with age related change in emotion:

Answer 27

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

Question 28

what is important about prefrontal cortex and amygdala

Answer 28

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

Question 29

Socioemotional selectivity theory:

Answer 29

in the face of distinct time horizons, younger adults and older adults pursue different goals

Question 30

according to socioemotional selectivity theory what do young adults percieve

Answer 30

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)

Question 31

Older adults:

Answer 31

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)

Question 32

conclusion of socioemotional selectivity theory

Answer 32

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