Here we go again: anticipatory and reactive mood responses to recurring unpleasant situations throughout adulthood

Much is known about reactive mood changes due to unpleasant tasks or situations. This research provides evidence that recurring events may also elicit anticipatory mood changes, and that both reactive and anticipatory mood responses need to be considered when studying affective experiences and emotion regulation. Based on prevalent theories on emotion regulation, we propose that anticipatory and reactive mood responses to recurring unpleasant events may change throughout adulthood, reflecting an age-related shift in emotion-regulation priorities. An unpleasant (monotonous) face-rating task across 10 100-min sessions was completed by 154 participants aged 20 to 81 years. Positive mood was assessed before and after each session. Almost all participants experienced a decline in positive mood while working on the task. However, in contrast to younger adults who showed a rapid drop in pretask mood in line with previous experience, older adults maintained their positive pretask mood across several sessions, suggesting a shift from anticipatory mood adjustment to positive mood maintenance with advancing adult age.