Gloria Luong

Better with age: Social relationships across adulthood

Older adults typically report higher levels of satisfaction with their social relationships than younger adults. The present paper integrates current developmental research to explain why social relationships are generally more positive with age. We discuss actions by older adults that contribute to more positive social experiences. We also include social role changes that may provide advantages for older adults when navigating their relationships. Next, we turn to interactional processes between older adults with their social partners. We review literature indicating that: (a) older adults engage in strategies that optimize positive social experiences and minimize negative ones by avoiding conflicts, and (b) social partners often reciprocate by treating older adults more positively and with greater forgiveness than they do younger adults.

Now You See It, Now You Don't: Age Differences in Affective Reactivity to Social Tensions

When faced with interpersonal conflict, older adults report using passive strategies more often than do young adults. They also report less affective reactivity in response to these tensions. We examined whether the use of passive strategies may explain age-related reductions in affective reactivity to interpersonal tensions. Over 8 consecutive evenings, participants (N = 1,031; 25-74 years-old) reported daily negative affect and the occurrence of tense situations resulting in an argument or avoidance of an argument. Older age was related to less affective reactivity when people decided to avoid an argument but was unrelated to affective reactivity when people engaged in arguments. Findings suggest that avoidance of negative situations may largely underlie age-related benefits in affective well-being.

Fewer Ups and Downs: Daily Stressors Mediate Age Differences in Negative Affect

The current study examined age differences in daily stressors, positive events (uplifts), and their associations with emotional experience among healthy older women. Women (N = 101, 63-93 years old) reported their daily experiences across 1 week. Older age was related to fewer stressors and less frequent negative affect. However, the association between negative affect and age was no longer significant after accounting for the occurrence of daily stressors. Older age was not significantly related to positive affect, although positive uplifts were reported less frequently with age. Findings provide a contextual explanation for emotional experience in very late life, where reduced exposure to stressors partially explains age-related reductions in negative affect.

Emotional Experience Across Adulthood The Theoretical Model of Strength and Vulnerability Integration

Strength and vulnerability integration (SAVI) is a theoretical model that predicts changes in emotional experience across adulthood. A growing number of studies find that as people age, they become more adept at using thoughts and behaviors to avoid or mitigate exposure to negative experiences. People gradually acquire this expertise over a lifetime of experiences and are more motivated to regulate their emotions because of perceptions of time left to live. SAVI further posits that aging is associated with physiological vulnerabilities that make regulating high levels of emotional arousal more difficult. In situations in which people experience high levels of distress, age differences that normally favor older adults in the use of emotion-regulation strategies will be attenuated (and may even be nullified or reversed), and the physiological consequences of sustained emotional arousal will be more costly for older adults. In this article, we describe SAVI and discuss recent studies supporting its predictions.

Shall we marry? Legal marriage as a commitment event in same-sex relationships.

ABSTRACT This study is a part of an exploratory study of 50 married and unmarried same-sex couples in Massachusetts conducted by the Wellesley Centers for Women following legalization of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts in 2004. This article examines whether and how legalization of same-sex marriage impacted same-sex partners’ commitment to one another, presentation to others as a couple, and treatment as a couple by others. Roughly one-quarter of the couples studied chose not to mark their commitment with ceremonies of any kind, while nearly three-fourths of the couples had either commitment (non-legal) ceremonies, legal weddings, or both. While decisions to legally marry largely were based on gaining legal protections, unforeseen impacts on self and relationships with family, friends, and the larger society revealed multiple layers of meaning. Implications of the study for public policy and social change are discussed.

Can't get it out of my head: age differences in affective responsiveness vary with preoccupation and elapsed time after daily hassles.

To better understand age differences in negative affective responses to daily hassles, the current study investigated how responses may depend on how much time has elapsed after the hassle and how much one still thinks about the hassle. In an experience-sampling approach with mobile phones, 397 participants aged 12 to 88 years reported their momentary activating (e.g., angry) and deactivating (e.g., disappointed) negative affect and occurrences of hassles, on average 55 times over 3 weeks. On measurement occasions when a hassle had occurred, participants also reported how long ago it occurred and how much they were currently preoccupied with thoughts about the hassle. Multilevel modeling results showed that, compared with more recent hassles, people across the entire age-range of the sample reported lower activating, yet higher deactivating, negative affect when hassles occurred a longer time ago. Age differences only emerged in situations when individuals were still preoccupied with a past hassle. In these situations, deactivating negative affect was higher with stronger preoccupation and more elapsed time after the hassles; these effects were more pronounced with older age. Activating negative affect was higher the more people reported being preoccupied with the hassle and this effect was also more pronounced with age. The results foster an understanding of age differences in negative affective responses to daily hassles by considering preoccupation with hassles and investigating activating and deactivating negative affect separately. We discuss under which circumstances affective responsiveness and age differences therein are more or less pronounced. (PsycINFO Database Record

Diurnal coupling between testosterone and cortisol from adolescence to older adulthood

The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) and hypothalamic-pituitary-gonadal (HPG) axes are typically conceptualized as mutually inhibitory systems; however, previous studies have found evidence for positive within-person associations (i.e., coupling) between cortisol and testosterone. One developmental hypothesis is that positive testosterone-cortisol coupling is unique to the adolescent period and that coupling becomes attenuated, or even switches direction, in adulthood. This study used a lifespan sample (N=292, ages 11-88) to test for age-related differences in coupling between cortisol and testosterone in daily life. Participants provided salivary hormone samples at waking, 30min after waking, and during the evening for two days. Hierarchical linear modeling was used to test the within-person and between-person associations between testosterone and cortisol. Within-person associations were further decomposed into associations due to coupled diurnal change versus coupled variability around diurnal change. Results indicated positive associations between cortisol and testosterone at all levels of analysis. Additionally, positive coupling was evident across the lifespan, even in older adults who are no longer expected to reproduce, but further investigation of developmental differences with a larger sample is necessary. Potential mechanisms and functions for positive coupling are discussed.

Age differences and longitudinal change in the effects of data collection mode on self-reports of psychosocial functioning

The current study investigated age differences and longitudinal change in mode effects, wherein individuals report less negative and more positive psychosocial functioning with data collection modes that have greater (vs. less) direct contact with interviewers (e.g., in-person interviews vs. telephone interviews). Using 2 longitudinal datasets, the Later Life Study of Social Exchanges (LLSSE) and Swedish Adoption/Twin Study of Aging (SATSA), we tested how mode effects may vary with cohort (baseline age differences) and maturational development (longitudinal change). In Study 1, LLSSE participants (65-90 years old) completed in-person and telephone interviews assessing negative and positive aspects of psychosocial functioning across 2 years. The data collection mode with greater direct contact with interviewers (in-person interviews) was associated with reporting less negative and more positive psychosocial functioning compared to the mode with less direct contact (telephone interviews). These mode effects were more pronounced with older baseline age, but only for the negative psychosocial measures. Mode effects also became stronger over time for reports of negative affect. In Study 2, SATSA participants (38-86 years old) completed mailed questionnaires and questionnaires collected in-person that assessed depressive symptoms and positive affect across 18 years. Consistent with Study 1, participants reported fewer depressive symptoms and more positive affect with greater (vs. less) direct contact with interviewers (questionnaires collected in-person vs. mailed questionnaires). For reports of depressive symptoms, but not positive affect, mode effects were more pronounced with age and time. Together, the results underscore how mode effects may contribute to inconsistent findings in the socioemotional aging literature.

One size fits all? Applying theoretical predictions about age and emotional experience to people with functional disabilities

The current study examined whether commonly observed age differences in affective experience among community samples of healthy adults would generalize to a group of adults who live with significant functional disability. Age differences in daily affect and affective reactivity to daily stressors among a sample of participants with spinal cord injury (SCI) were compared with a noninjured sample. Results revealed that patterns of affective experience varied by sample. Among noninjured adults, older age was associated with lower levels of daily negative affect, higher levels of daily positive affect, and less negative affective reactivity in response to daily stressors. In contrast, among the sample with SCI, no age differences emerged. Findings, which support the model of Strength and Vulnerability Integration, underscore the importance of taking life context into account when predicting age differences in affective well-being.

From adolescence to old age : Developmental perspectives on the extended process model of emotion regulation

James Gross opens his target article with the observation that a lively interest in emotion regulation has spread throughout many subdisciplines within psychology during the past decade. A broadly applicable theoretical framework of emotion regulation would therefore be valuable, as it would facilitate the communication, integration, and synergistic effects of the many diverse (and sometimes disparate) research activities within and across subareas. In our commentary, we provide a developmental perspective, specifically targeting the life period from adolescence to late adulthood, on the potential of the extended process model of emotion regulation to serve as such a common theoretical scaffold. After briefly summarizing relevant findings in the emotional development literature, we discuss how the available evidence on age-related differences from youth to old age may fit into the extended process model of emotion regulation. In so doing, we explore how the model may be used as a framework for stipulating and organizing future research activities on the many unanswered questions in the emotional development literature, and we point to additional growth areas that a unifying theoretical framework of emotion regulation would ideally address from the viewpoint of developmental psychologists. Specifically, a developmental perspective calls attention to the importance (a) of understanding factors that contribute to individual differences in emotion regulation processes and (b) of defining the outcomes of emotion regulation, that is, of agreeing upon a set of criteria that indicate how helpful or harmful given regulatory attempts (in given contexts) are for the individuals’ short-term and long-term development. For example, how and why do individuals of various age groups differ in their emotion regulation goals and strategies? How can we evaluate the short-term effectiveness and long-term adaptiveness of emotion regulatory efforts in different age groups? Such a perspective can help obtain a better understanding of the general question of individual differences in emotion regulation. Emotional Experience and Regulation from Adolescence to Old Age: Some Key Findings