The Use Of Emotion Regulation Strategies Across Diverse Emotions: Exploring Age-Related Variations

To date, studies have not consistently provided evidence for age differences in emotion regulation. This study aims to explore whether there are differences between young and older individuals in their use of Reappraisal and Expressive Suppression when experiencing 10 emotions (anger, fear, sadness, disgust, guilt, shame, distress, upset, contempt and envy). One hundred and five participants (Males = 43.8%) were involved in this study. At the time of completing the questionnaire, 56 participants were aged between 18 and 39, and 49 were aged over 59. The questionnaire consisted of a brief description of Reappraisal and Expressive Suppression. Participants were asked to rate, for each strategy, how much they used it when experiencing each of the listed emotions. A series of T-Tests were run. Overall, the results show that the older group tended to use these emotion regulation strategies less than their younger counterparts. More specifically, while no significant difference between the groups emerged in relation to anger, disgust, distress, and contempt, older participants exhibited a reduced likelihood of employing the intended strategies when responding to emotions such as fear, sadness, guilt, shame, upset, and envy. The differences, which vary according to the strategies, will be discussed. In addition, also the differences between groups in terms of automatic versus intentional emotion regulation will be discussed.