Ute Kunzmann

Is age-related stability of subjective well-being a paradox? Cross-sectional and longitudinal evidence from the Berlin Aging Study

Subjective well-being is thought to remain relatively stable into old age despite health-related losses. Age and functional health constraints were examined as predictors of individual differences and intraindividual change in subjective well-being, as indicated by positive and negative affect, using cross-sectional (N = 516) and longitudinal (N = 203) samples from the Berlin Aging Study (age range 70-103 years). In cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses, age and functional health constraints were negatively related to positive affect but unrelated to negative affect. Cross-sectionally, controlling for functional health constraints reversed the direction of the relationship between age and positive affect and produced a negative association between age and negative affect. Findings suggest two qualifications to the average stability of overall subjective well-being: Only some dimensions of subjective well-being remain stable, while others decline; age per se is not a cause of decline in subjective well-being but health constraints are.

Age Differences in Emotional Reactivity: The Sample Case of Sadness.

Past studies have suggested that the intensity of subjective reactions to emotion-arousing stimuli remains stable, whereas the magnitude of autonomic reactions declines with age. The goal of the present studies was to investigate whether this evidence will generalize to newly edited films dealing with age-relevant themes such as the loss of loved ones. In Study 1, greater self-reported sadness was found in older than in younger adults in response to all films. Findings of Study 2, which were based on an independent sample, replicated those of Study 1. In addition, 6 indicators of autonomic nervous system activity were assessed. Young and old adults did not differ in their autonomic reactions to the films. This evidence suggests that when older people are exposed to stimuli featuring themes that are relevant to their age group, they show greater subjective and physiological reactions than would be expected on the basis of past research.

Behavioral inhibition and amplification during emotional arousal: a comparison of two age groups

This study investigated age differences in the ability to suppress and amplify expressive behavior during emotional arousal. Young and old participants viewed 3 film clips about medical procedures while their behavioral, autonomic, and subjective responses were recorded. Half of the participants viewed all 3 films without additional instructions; the other half was asked to suppress and amplify their behavioral expression during the 2nd and 3rd films. Except for heart rate, suppression and amplification produced similar patterns of autonomic activation. Neither suppression nor amplification had effects on self-reported emotion. There were no age differences in the ability to suppress or amplify emotional expression or in their physiological or subjective consequences. Considering that older peoples unregulated reactivity was lower than that of young adults, suppression may have been easier and amplification more difficult for older adults. Voluntary emotion regulation might be one domain of human performance that is spared from age-related losses.

Positive Adult Personality Development

Does personality stay stable after young adulthood or is there continued change throughout middle and later adulthood? For decades, this question has caused heated debate. Over the last couple of years, a consensus has emerged based on recent cross-cultural as well as longitudinal evidence. This consensus confirms that indeed there is personality change in middle and later adulthood. Many authors have labeled this change personality maturation or growth. In somewhat simplified terms the observed pattern is as follows: neuroticism declines, conscientiousness and agreeableness increase. At the same time it has been argued that this pattern of personality change is the result of coping with the developmental tasks of adulthood and, thus, increased adjustment. We would like to examine this practice of equating developmental adjustment with growth and ask how to define personality growth. To answer this question, we consult theories of personality development as well as lifespan theory.

Wisdom-Related Knowledge: Affective, Motivational, and Interpersonal Correlates

This study investigated the connection between wisdom as a body of expert knowledge about the meaning and conduct of life and indicators of affective, motivational, and interpersonal functioning. Structural equation analyses showed that individuals higher on wisdom-related knowledge reported (a) higher affective involvement combined with lower negative and pleas-ant feelings, (b) a value orientation that focused conjointly on other-enhancing values and personal growth combined with a lesser tendency toward values revolving around a pleasurable life, and (c) a preference for cooperative conflict management strategies combined with a lower tendency to adopt submissive, avoidant, or dominant strategies. These findings corroborate the theoretical notion that wisdom involves affective modulation and complexity rather than the predominant seeking of pleasure and also a joint motivational commitment to developing the potential of oneself and that of others.

The Two Faces of Wisdom: Wisdom as a General Theory of Knowledge and Judgment about Excellence in Mind and Virtue vs. Wisdom as Everyday Realization in People and Products

There are several legitimate ways of conceptualizing and studying wisdom. One is largely informed by Western philosophy and treats wisdom as an analytic theory of expert knowledge, judgment, and advice about difficult and uncertain matters of life. Another is more consistent with Asian philosophical non-secularized traditions and treats wisdom as instantiated by wise persons or their products. The second approach is always but an approximation to the analytically constructed utopia of wisdom. Wise persons are approximations to wisdom, but they are not wisdom. Ardelt’s critique of our work proposes that our theoretical conception of wisdom as a body of expert knowledge in a specific subject matter is similar to ‘cold’ cognition. We disagree and assert that our conception of wisdom includes as antecedents, correlates, and consequences a rich spectrum of specific cognitive, emotional, motivational and social factors as well as life contexts. Our empirical research unequivocally supports this multidimensional and collaborative view.

Age differences in three facets of empathy: performance-based evidence.

This study investigated age differences in cognitive and affective facets of empathy: the ability to perceive anothers emotions accurately, the capacity to share anothers emotions, and the ability to behaviorally express sympathy in an empathic episode. Participants, 80 younger (M(age) = 32 years) and 73 older (M(age) = 59 years) adults, viewed eight film clips, each portraying a younger or an older adult thinking-aloud about an emotionally engaging topic that was relevant to either younger adults or older adults. In comparison to their younger counterparts, older adults generally reported and expressed greater sympathy while observing the target persons; and they were better able to share the emotions of the target persons who talked about a topic that was relevant to older adults. Age-related deficits in the cognitive ability to accurately perceive anothers emotions were only evident when the target person talked about a topic of little relevance to older adults. In sum, the present performance-based evidence speaks for multidirectional age differences in empathy.

Age Differences in Emotion Recognition: The Task Matters

OBJECTIVES This study examined the impact of context information on emotion recognition from a life-span developmental perspective. The main prediction was that age-related deficits in emotion recognition will only be evident in context-poor tasks. METHODS A sample of 48 younger (M(age) = 23 years) and 35 older women (M(age) = 70 years) watched 48 film clips, each depicting a female target who talked about an emotional biographical episode and expressed one of three target emotions (i.e., happiness, sadness, or anger). Half of the films were presented without sound (context-poor condition) and the other half was presented with sound (context-rich condition). RESULTS Independent of the condition, younger women were better at recognizing sadness and anger than older women. However, the condition had an effect on age differences in happiness recognition: Age-related deficits were only evident in the context-poor condition. In addition, we found that logical reasoning predicted individual differences and age-related differences in sadness and anger recognition but not in happiness recognition. DISCUSSION The present findings suggest that age differences in emotion recognition are context and emotion specific. Together, the evidence speaks for substantial plasticity in emotion recognition (i.e., within-person variability) well into old age.

Emotional reactivity across the adult life span: the cognitive pragmatics make a difference.

Previously, we found that during films about age-typical losses, older adults experienced greater sadness than young adults, whereas their physiological responses were just as large. In the present study, our goal was to replicate this finding and extend past work by examining the role of cognitive functioning in age differences in emotional reactivity. We measured the autonomic and subjective responses of 240 adults (age range=20 to 70) while they viewed films about age-typical losses from our previous work. Findings were fully supportive of our past work: The magnitude of subjective reactions to our films increased linearly over the adult years, whereas there were no age differences on the level of physiological reactivity. We also found that the subjective reactions of adults with high pragmatic intelligence were of moderate size independent of their own age or the age relevance of the emotion elicitor. In contrast, the subjective reactions of adults low on pragmatic intelligence were more variable. Together, this evidence suggests that research on age differences in emotional reactivity may benefit from a perspective that considers individual difference variables as well as contextual variations.

Emotional aging: a discrete emotions perspective

Perhaps the most important single finding in the field of emotional aging has been that the overall quality of affective experience steadily improves during adulthood and can be maintained into old age. Recent lifespan developmental theories have provided motivation- and experience-based explanations for this phenomenon. These theories suggest that, as individuals grow older, they become increasingly motivated and able to regulate their emotions, which could result in reduced negativity and enhanced positivity. The objective of this paper is to expand existing theories and empirical research on emotional aging by presenting a discrete emotions perspective. To illustrate the usefulness of this approach, we focus on a discussion of the literature examining age differences in anger and sadness. These two negative emotions have typically been subsumed under the singular concept of negative affect. From a discrete emotions perspective, however, they are highly distinct and show multidirectional age differences. We propose that such contrasting age differences in specific negative emotions have important implications for our understanding of long-term patterns of affective well-being across the adult lifespan.