Gisela Labouvie-Vief

Age and Sex Differences in Strategies of Coping and Defense Across the Life Span

Age and sex differences in the use of coping and defense strategies were examined in life-span sample of 381 individuals. Participants responded to 2 self-report measures assessing mechanisms of coping and defense and measures assessing their level of cognitive complexity. Older adults used a combination of coping and defense strategies indicative of greater impulse control and the tendency to positively appraise conflict situations. Adolescents and younger adults used strategies that were outwardly aggressive and psychologically undifferentiated, indicating lower levels of impulse control and self-awareness. Women used more internalizing defenses than men and used coping strategies that flexibly integrated intra-and interpersonal aspects of conflict situations. Taken together, findings provide evidence for the age- and sex-specific use of strategies of coping and defense, suggesting that men and women may face different developmental tasks in the process toward maturity in adulthood.

Dynamic Integration Affect, Cognition, and the Self in Adulthood

Positive self- and emotional development is often measured by optimization of happiness, but a second aspect of positive development—the ability to tolerate tension and negativity in the interest of maintaining objective representations—needs to be integrated with this hedonic emphasis. The integration of these two aspects, optimization and differentiation, reflects a dynamic balance. Such integration is possible when emotional activation or arousal is moderate, but is impaired at very high levels of activation. From youth to middle adulthood, the capacity for integration increases, but later in life, limitations or poor regulation strategies foster compensatory processes that compromise integration.

Speaking about feelings: Conceptions of emotion across the life span.

Self-descriptions of emotions in 72 participants aged 10 to 77 were assessed. Responses were reliably scored in terms of a 4-level cognitive-developmental coding scheme for each of 4 emotions: anger, sadness, fear, and happiness. Results showed that those younger or lower in ego level and verbal ability described emotions in terms of sensorimotor actions, outer appearance, conventional and technical descriptions, rigid impulse monitoring, and an emphasis on control and the ideal. Those older or of higher ego level and verbal ability conveyed a vivid sense of the experience, had explicit knowledge of bodily sensations, accepted conflict within self and others, and displayed flexibility and delay of action. These findings suggest that understanding of emotions develops along a dimension of cognitive complexity over the life span. This dimension, in turn, is related to life span changes in coping and defense.

Affect optimization and affect complexity: modes and styles of regulation in adulthood.

In this research, the authors hypothesize that affect regulation involves 2 independent strategies: affect optimization, the tendency to constrain affect to positive values, and affect complexity, the amplification of affect in the search for differentiation and objectivity. Community residents age 15 to 86 were assessed by using 2 convergent measurement domains: 1 based on measures of positive-negative affect and cognitive-affective complexity and 1 based on measures of coping and defense. Both domains yielded the hypothesized affect optimization and affect complexity dimensions. As predicted, the affect optimization dimensions are primarily related to relationship quality variables, and the affect complexity dimensions to socioeconomic status and education. Hence, positive affect and its maximization have different significance in the context of high- or low-affect complexity.

Emotions and Self-Regulation: A Life Span View

Both throughout history and in current philosophies, two modes of thought and self-regulation have been documented: one that is intuitive, subjective, and emotional, and one that is rational, objectiv

Assessing alexithymia and related emotional ability constructs using multiple methods: Interrelationships among measures.

This study examined relationships among various measures of emotional ability reflecting different methods of assessment: self-report, clinical interview, collateral report, and emotion-relevant performance. On 140 young adults, the authors assessed self-reported alexithymia, emotional approach coping, and trait metamood skills; observer-reported alexithymia; interviewer-rated alexithymia; emotional awareness in response to vignettes; and emotional intelligence test performance. There were moderate magnitude correlations among the self-report measures, but correlations among other measures were relatively low. Confirmatory factor analyses supported a 3-factor model in which explicit self, implicit self, and explicit other measures were differentiated. These emotional ability measures do not form a unitary construct but differ as a function of the person providing the information and whether the measure is explicit or implicit.

Age, ego level, and the life-span development of coping and defense processes.

Developmental variation in coping and defense strategy use was examined in a sample of 100 male and female participants ranging in age from 10 to 77 years. Each participant was administered Loevingers ego development task, the Ways of Coping measure, and the Defense Mechanism Inventory. In addition, a brief narrative of a stressful experience was assessed for the developmental level of the response and for its content. The results suggest that, in addition to age, the developmental measures of ego level and source of stress predict the use of particular coping and defense strategies. In keeping with other research, sex differences in coping and defense strategies were also found. These findings are discussed in light of the need for tasks that are able to assess both developmental and individual differences in the maturity of coping and defense strategy use.

Age and gender differences in cardiac reactivity and subjective emotion responses to emotional autobiographical memories.

This research reports age and gender differences in cardiac reactivity and subjective responses to the induction of autobiographical memories related to anger, fear, sadness, and happiness. Heart rate (HR) and subjective state were assessed at baseline and after the induction of each emotion in 113 individuals (61 men, 52 women; 66% European American, 34% African American) ranging in age from 15 to 88 years (M = 50.0; SD = 20.2). Cardiac reactivity was lower in older individuals; however, for anger and fear, these age effects were significantly more pronounced for the women than the men. There were no gender differences in subjective responses, however, suggesting that the lower cardiac reactivity found among older people is dependent on gender and the specific emotion assessed.

Representations of Self Across the Life Span

This research extends a cognitive-developmental approach to examining age differences in self-representation from adolescence to mature adulthood and later life. The authors suggest that mature adults move from representations of self that are relatively poorly differentiated from others or social conventions to ones that involve emphasis on process, context, and individuality. Participants (n men = 73, n women = 76), ranging in age from 11 to 85 years, provided spontaneous accounts of their self-representations and responded to measures assessing cognitive and emotional functioning and broad dimensions of personality. On average, self-representation scores peaked in middle-aged adults and were lowest in the preadolescent and older adult age groups. Level of self-representation was related to cognitive and personality variables, but there was some evidence that the pattern of correlates shifted from younger (ages 15-45) to older (ages 46-85) age segments.

Dynamic Development and Mature Autonomy

This paper proposes a neo-Piagetian structural model of adult development. It is argued that propositional logic may fail as a device for regulating affect and action, and only prefigures rather than embodies mature structures of self-regulation. Three adult stages of logic are proposed: intrasystemic (formal realism), intersystemic (contextual relativism), and autonomy. These stages can serve as a broad organizational device for understanding a wide array of adult developmental phenomena, including cognitive, affective, ego, and interpersonal development.